
How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months - fogus
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/20/learning-language/
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gruseom
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.

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jrnkntl
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.

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robfitz
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.

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MikeMacMan
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.

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

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patio11
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.)

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dcurtis
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.

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wheels
These things assume that language learning abilities are roughly universal,
and that languages within the same vague groups are roughly as hard as one-
another.

German, for instance, turns out to be a lot harder than Spanish, which I'd
learned when I was younger. I've been in Germany for 7.5 years, have had
girlfriends I only spoke German to, speak German with most of my friends ...
and I still struggle with getting the grammar right.

Once again I find Tim's take on things horribly over-simplifying. It seems
that he makes rather audacious points by redefining words (e.g. "work",
"fluency") and then drawing a bunch of conclusions based on those
redefinitions.

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jbellis
> German, for instance, turns out to be a lot harder than Spanish, which I'd
> learned when I was younger

I'd guess it's the "learned when I was younger" part that made the difference.

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davidw
I studied German when I was younger (middle school/high school), and Italian a
bit later (college), and Italian is definitely easier (though no language is
_easy_ ).

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kentosi
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.

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tienshiao
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.

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ErrantX
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).

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codexon
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/>

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

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

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randy
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).

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vixen99
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?

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billswift
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.

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sschueller
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.

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nopassrecover
Anyone have any links to develop on this idea?

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toisanji
[http://sanbit.com/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-be-fluent-in-
a-f...](http://sanbit.com/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-be-fluent-in-a-foreign-
language)

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c00p3r
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.

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mahmud
_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.

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mark_h
_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).

