
Rules for Learning Foreign Languages in Record Time - xvirk
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2014/03/12/how-to-learn-a-foreign-language/
======
Mvandenbergh
I'm not a huge fan of the sales-talky, motivational speaker tone that Benny
uses. [Also what I don't like about Tim Ferris]. That being said, I think the
basic message of, "the way to learn a new language is to speak it as much as
humanly possible", is important enough that it deserves to be repeated despite
it being pretty obvious.

I spent eight months studying French for a few hours every Saturday morning in
a class and a few hours a week doing homework, I felt like I was making good
progress in the class but without actually being able to usefully speak
French. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had a language learning
experience like this.

The thing is - I could (kind of) use two past tenses and one future tense
while still stumbling over basic introductions and asking for directions. This
doesn't make any sense from a utility point of view.

So I hired a succession of French teachers on Skype to have the same basic
conversations with - the kind of basic transactional or quick introduction
"speed dating" type conversations that I'd actually be likely to have with
native speakers on a frequent basis. Surprise, surprise, my French abilities
got better by leaps and bounds. It cost less than I was paying for the classes
as well.

I now think that organised group classes are a waste of money for adult
learners. I can find native language French teachers that do classes on Skype
for less than £10 / hour, which is about the price of group classes with 6-10
people in them. Spending an hour which is 45 mins me talking and 15 minutes of
corrections has done more for my spoken French than an hour of group classes
where I actually have maybe 5 minutes cumulatively to speak.

Yeah, sometimes it is a little boring spending an hour having conversations
about hotel bookings and flight reservations, but I can actually do those
things pretty confidently after practicing them for two hours.

~~~
ctolsen
There is no better teacher than to actually go out and speak the language, so
I'm not surprised you got good results one-on-one. Similarly, but probably
with less efficiency, I'd like to recommend Michel Thomas' language tapes.
They focus entirely on conversation and active use of the language.

One thing we should shy away from is the marketing message of "learning like
children", like Rosetta Stone is doing. It is fairly well documented that
adults can learn languages at least close to as well as children [0][1], but
adults learn _differently_.

Here's something you can do as an adult which a child lacks the prerequisite
hooks to do:

\- English words ending in -ible or -able – possible, table, comfortable,
probable – have the same meaning in French. They're pronounced differently
(ending sounds like _-sibl_ or _-abl_ in French, not -səbl̩ or -eɪbəl)

\- Same with -ent and -ant: important, different, etc. Usually adds an -e when
writing. (pronounced with _-ɑ̃_ not -ənt)

\- Also words ending in -ary: Military, necessary. Change the ending to -aire
when writing. (pr. _-ɛʁ_ not -ɛɹi)

\- Lastly, -ence + -ance: Difference, importance. (pr. _-ɑ̃s_ not -əns)

Congratulations, you now know well over 1000 words in French.

0:
[http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/myths.html](http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/myths.html)
1: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-
bilingual/201309/ho...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-
bilingual/201309/how-early-second-language)

~~~
poissonpie
Michel Thomas is excellent - I learned enough French from his course (having
never learned any French before) to have some basic conversations with people
I was staying with in France. Nothing groundbreaking or deep, but general
basic chit chat about the weather, what to do, where to go, how to get there
etc.

------
kennon
Good tips but the 3-month claims create unrealistic expectations. It likely
results in higher book sales but means most people will give up before they
actually become fluent in a foreign language.

Fluency, also, is difficult to define. I listened to a couple minutes of Benny
stammering his way through a Mandarin language interview. His level seems on
par for 3 months of study, so perhaps he equates basic communication as
"fluency." If I can talk to a stranger on the bus for 10 minutes, does that
mean I'm fluent? Not according to most language rating scales, though they are
admittedly very subjective.

The Foreign Service Institute of the US State Dept sorts foreign languages
into three groups, based upon how long it takes a typical student to reach
professional competency (CEFR C1, IFL 3/3+):

[http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-
guide/lang...](http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-
guide/language-difficulty)

Professional competency means: can you perform office functions in that
language? Most non-Latin languages take a year of dedicated study (1000 hrs)
to reach fluency. Exceptionally difficult languages, such as Arabic or
Mandarin, take 2 years. Also, it's debatable whether even the 3/3+ moniker
equates to fluency. I scored a 3+ in Russian and there are many, many
situations that I cannot navigate in that language.

So could you, for instance, learn Arabic to a C1 level within 3 months? It's
highly doubtful and shame on the author for giving people that impression.

------
SeanLuke
I speak three languages, more or less. Much of what this guy says is either
obvious or wrong. There's not much in-between.

The big irritant is his absurd claims about adult learning capabilities. When
I was in my teens, I learned Cantonese as a native English speaker. In my 40s,
I learned Italian. Cantonese -- an extremely difficult language for English
speakers -- was far easier to learn.

In truth I think there is one overriding rule to successfully learning a
foreign language. No matter how many classes you take or Rosetta Stone CDs you
buy, will never really learn a language unless you are forced to speak it ALL
THE TIME. If you want to learn German, move to Germany.

When foreign PhD students come to the US, I tell them that if they want to be
effective researchers in computer science, they must know English well. And
step one for doing that, as PhD students in the US, is to get roommates who do
not speak their native language.

~~~
caio1982
Slightly offtopic: I live in a city in Brazil whose heritage is basically
german so I know a lot of people trying to learn german here. A particular
friend of mine used to work for an IT german company and went to Germany a
couple of times and he said every time he tried to speak their language they'd
frown at him or feel like "conversation's not flowing" and switch to english.
Other friends living in Germany (Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin) and also in
Switzerland (Zurich) said the same happens to them with some frequency. I
never heard about it happening with other languages or in other countries, so
why is that? Any germans out there care to comment on this?

Edit: just to make it clear, this is purely out of linguistic curiosity

~~~
cafard
American here. I suspect that if you get out in the countryside and smaller
towns you will find a lot less of that.

~~~
dagurp
Probably true. I think it's a matter of patience

------
dschiptsov
If we define "learning foreign language" as an ability to read classic texts
without dictionary or skipping words _and_ being able to watch classic movies
or TV without subtitles.. Well, it took me almost 10 years, but now I could
read, say, Feynman's lectures without stumbling.

In a world of punks being able to say "hi, how are you, how much for this" in
several languages is called "polyglot".)

~~~
V-2
I once heard a definition that you are not really competent in a foreign
language until you're able to solve crosswords in it. This principle is
obviously tongue-in-cheek, but there's much truth to it in my opinion.

~~~
irishpolyglot
I can't do crosswords in English, my native language. I definitely can't
breeze through classical texts. It's important to be realistic on the other
end of the scale too.

Criteria like this are way too demanding, and it's one of the biggest problems
in language learning that makes people feel worthless; having elitist
standards that you "don't" speak a language unless you speak it like a
university professor, regardless of the fact that you may not speak your
mother tongue that way.

~~~
V-2
Well there's different types of crosswords. I guess they mean the ones that
focus on the language itself (eg. idiomatic stuff) and not requiring some
obscure knowledge

------
aussie_mate
this guy is a fake. i am polish and i can guarantee that there is no way in
the world that one can speak the way he spoke in the video in just 1 hour of
learning. polish is very hard to learn (ask my wife, she's an Aussie and after
10 years she still cannot pronounce my name/surname correctly). great PR stunt
but hardly believable. i speak 5 languages but it took me 20 years to learn
them (excluding polish) and it's not a walk in the park......definitely not 3
months......just ask any linguist or foreign language teacher. it's just like
saying that you can read a programming book or watch a video tutorial and get
a job hacking for google or facebook. what a load of bullshit! btw, i work as
a programmer and used to work as a teacher

~~~
V-2
He only picked up bits and pieces. A Polish native speaker myself, I think
it's entirely believable.

Creating an impression of language fluency out of a very limited set of words
and phrases is a talent in its own right.

It certainly has an element of deception to it :) but he can still be legit in
the sense that you mean.

Polish pronunciation is notoriously difficult, but once you can make yourself
understood, pronunciation is of secondary importance. There's a lot of people
with a near-native command of foreign language with accent as thick as mud.

~~~
bgilroy26
I agree about the talent for creating the illusion of fluency.

I think that's the real difference maker for Tim's guest blogger, he has a
strong sense of what a language is in the abstract, a sense for how people use
language in general, and practice at getting through the awkward time when you
are frustrating to speak with.

Those universal gifts are the most valuable ones of language learning, and
they can come while learning your second language, but they come faster when
you have dabbled in 4 or so.

------
V-2
I live in Poland. There's a lot of Mormon missionaries coming here, mostly
Americans (but not exclusively). I have to say that I am very impressed by
their command of Polish. As far as I know, they only attend a 3 months course
prior to leaving their home country. And they're really fluent. Motivation?

~~~
jaimebuelta
The single most important concept of learning a language is personal
__motivation __. I always thought that without that __needing __a language
(because you live in a country where you need to use it, because your girl
/boyfriend speaks it, because you want to read some books/watch movies and are
only available on a different language) is extremely difficult to get it.

If you think that learning a language would be cool, or it will make a good
job opportunity... that strong need is not that present, and everything is way
more difficult..

~~~
yread
Excellent point!

Learning French in France or Spanish in Spain is easier than learning Dutch in
Netherlands because everybody speaks at least OK English, there is just no
need to learn Dutch. Getting a little desperate and lonely helps a great deal
to picking up a language faster

------
seanccox
Can we change the headline to reflect the content:

"12 Rules for Learning Enough of a Foreign Language to Moderately Communicate
and Possibly Comprehend in Written or Spoken Form in Record Time"

------
bigd
I believe few of the points he made were remarkable: the intonation/accent is
definitely true. Walk like an egyptian, is really true, full immersion too. I
also believe 3 months are a reasonable time for a B2 when those points are
granted.

Then I admire, and envy, that he has time enough to go around the world and
learn new languages for the sake of it.

~~~
loumf
He made it his job. He sells polyglot e-books and courses.

------
hrktb
As many 'X rules for Y' posts, the fundamental skills are not discussed.

People who already became somewhat fluent in a foreign language during
childhood and have a work or hobby keeping them learning new things everyday
won't need half of these 'rules'. Learning basic vocabulary and grammar will
be enough as a starter to speak with people, read/watch things and progress
very fast organicly, without any 'tricks'. I had friends learning Korean in 6
months by going straight through the alphabet and grammar system and then
exclusively watching tv dramas and wikis and online forums;but they also
learned japanese and english and german and can code in 4 computer languages
at any time.

Someone who never cared about foreign language until 30, had very conservative
jobs and hobbies when it came to learning new concepts (am I describing a
solid third of the population of most countries) will have a very hard time to
first relearn to learn, and develop the mind scafolding to handle multiple
languages and systems, and the best approach to learning won't be the same at
all.

------
seangp
I wish more people saw this guy for the snake oil salesman he really is (edit:
Ferriss that is).

~~~
mhartl
I think Ferriss's beloved 80/20 rule applies to Ferriss himself: 80% of the
value comes from 20% of his material. There is, to be sure, a lot of
hyperbole, but once you filter out the dross what's left is gold.

------
tokenadult
Benny's American accent in Chinese is thick (the tones are often wrong on
individual words), and his speech is halting, but even with the mistakes in
grammar and vocabulary choice, I can understand him. (I am an American native
speaker of English who has been learning Chinese as a second language since I
was a teenager in the 1970s. My HN user profile discloses other languages I
have studied over the years.) So, yeah, I guess he's doing not half badly. You
won't fail to notice that Benny speaks MUCH more slowly than the native
speaker of Chinese he "interviews," and after the prepared remarks he uses to
open up the interview, and a few personal stories about himself, he hardly
interacts with the native speaker of Chinese except to say "uh-huh." (You will
also not fail to notice that the Chinese woman he is interviewing knows
English, and presumably has spoken Chinese to other Americans with thick
accents before.)

I think the rule of language learning in the blog post that has the most
plausibility is "#8 – Embrace mistakes." (The interview subject basically says
this to Benny in the interview, that he has a good habit of immediately using
the language he learns, which he learns to use, and uses bravely.) I know an
American man whose first visit to east Asia was simply to use up a one-way
portion of an airplane ticket a friend gave him. He arrived in Taiwan in 1982
not knowing a word of Chinese, and having a thick south Boston (specifically
Quincy, I think) accent that made his English sound strange to most Americans
who met him. But he was very bold in striking up conversations with local
people in Taiwan, and practiced his Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin)
relentlessly, so he gradually outpaced a lot of more shy Americans in his
actual communication proficiency. He eventually found work in a high-tech
company operated mostly by Hong Kong Chinese people, and has had a very
satisfying career working both in east Asia and on the west coast of the
United States. I was DELIGHTED to remake acquaintance with him by LinkedIn a
few years ago and to endorse his language ability. He earned it.

Of course Benny is promoting his new book, and here is a link to some press
coverage generated by his publicity efforts:

[http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/13/benny-lewis-the-man-who-
says-y...](http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/13/benny-lewis-the-man-who-says-you-can-
learn-a-language-in-three-months-4545062/)

Perhaps the statement in the article, "Lewis says: ‘The problem here, though,
is that if you have such high criteria for fluency, then I have to confess,
I’m not even fluent in English, my native language’" helps put his claims in
context.

~~~
irishpolyglot
"Benny's American accent in Chinese is thick" I'm Irish.

~~~
xiaoma
While we're on nationality, I have to say I find it hypocritical in the
extreme that you wrote a long angry blog post about problems you have with
Americans, which include overzealous marketing. And then you make ridiculous
claims like "fluent in 3 months".

I saw your ChinesePod video after three months of study and it wasn't even
remotely fluent. As tokenadult said, other than the intro it was slow and
heavily accented.

In fact, I would go so far as to say the _average_ college aged student I've
met who has done an intensive program such as IUP in Beijing or ICLP in China
not only has better reading skills, but also larger vocabulary, clearer accent
and more fluid speech.

To clarify, I'm _not_ saying you didn't manage to learn a good amount in three
months. ICLP and IUP are top programs and very intense, and you're definitely
ahead of the average university student who isn't in a great immersion
program. Why the over-the-top claims? It's completely possible to make a
successful language learning business without them. Just look at Steve "the
linguist" Kaufman (a pretty good Chinese speaker, btw).

Benny speaking Chinese - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOmG-
ufK0UI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOmG-ufK0UI)

Steve Kaufman -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmXVN2t2seE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmXVN2t2seE)

------
mholt
1-2 years? Not bad.

FWIW, Mormon missionaries learn their languages in 6-12 weeks, then are fluent
after about a year in their field. I wonder how they do that.

------
personlurking
I've met Ben (which doesn't say much since many people have met him), read his
blog posts from time to time and seen his TedX talk [1].

Being fluent in a language that isn't mine, near-fluent in another language
and intermediate in yet another, I could never buy his idea of "just speak it
without needing to know anything yet." If it were plausible, many people would
not be monolingual. Plus, any claims of fluency in less than one year, in-
country, I also don't buy...not true fluency, anyways. Other than that, I've
got nothing against him.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZqUeWshwMs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZqUeWshwMs)

------
dagurp
I feel like he's focusing too much on the speaking part and too little on
listening. I can make myself understandable in Danish, German and Spanish but
it is impossible for me to follow a conversation in any of them.

------
koshak
All languages divide into groups. It's always easier to learn foreign language
of your group. For example if you are an English speaker, you can start with
German. Then look at Dutch. They have more or less same grammar rules. After
that if you've had enough zeal and curiosity, you can probably understand main
rules of forming words, split unknown words into lexical units and morphemes.
That said you can move to the next level - French, Italian and Spanish.
Italian and Spanish can be learnt simultaniously. It's hard, but as the
languages have a lot in common, it will be interesting.

My native language is Russian. I can understand and speak Ukranian,
Belorussian, Chech, Serbian. Just because they have a lot in common. And vice
versa. But not always...

Well the only rule to succeed as already mentioned is to dive into language.
People who move to other countries usually learn to speak foreign language
within several months.

But as far as we live in Internet you can learn whatever you want without
actually moving. Every day we read thousands of sentences and 10s thousands of
words. You can read the same in the language you want to learn. Facebook,
twitter, google, newsfeeds, search for the information you want in the
language you want to know and read articles.

The more you read the more you learn and soon you'll be able to form your
phrases. As soon as you can form phrases and understand what you read without
searching every word in dictionary, you're ready to dive into grammar. Learn
grammar as fast as possible now. That's the hardest and the most exhausting
part of my method, but it is obligatory. Learn rules, draw tables with tenses,
declension rules and so on. Find grammar exercises and do them all. Thus you
train your brain to form phrases the right way, to spell the right way.

Next part is fun part - pronunciation. It's fun because in real life you
sometimes can't understand your neighbour, and dialects divide your country to
sort of "language provinces". In russian language there's no English sound
"th". It transformed to 'f'(Theodor - Федор) and 't' (thriller - триллер). So
placing tongue between teeth is a hard but funny part for newbies. It's also
funny to learn to pronounce 'r' in German, English and French. You will learn
a lot about your tongue and jaw.

Last part is a "separate thread" part because learning new words is a constant
process. Sometimes it's also a funny part. For example in chech the word
hallway(chodba) is pronounced exactly like russian word ходьба (walking) and
german 'Herr' (Mr.) is pronounced like russian 'penis', so "Herr Ivanov,
sitzen Sie bitte" sounds funny. And spanish 'huesos' (bones) is the
transliteration of 'хуесос' (dicksucker). Apart from that there are a lot of
words common for all european languages.

That's what I do. It's a slow and silent method for learning foreign language
on your own. It's like progressive jpeg. The harder you work the better the
result. But every next language is learnt faster than previous.

------
JetSpiegel
By the end of the post this starts to look like a spy handbook.

------
triberian
Real life hacker, always a pleasure to read. Go on Tim!

