Benny Lewis's Blog, page 81
February 23, 2016
How Learning a New Language Boosts Your Creativity
One of the show’s rules was that we had to write a diary about our feelings towards other participants on the show. Well, I have to admit, my Vietnamese wasn’t as good back then. I needed a lot of help. But something in me enjoyed the process of writing in another language.
The show ended in October 2014, but the more I reflect on this experience, the more I miss going back and forth between writing in Vietnamese and English. I’ve also realised that language learning really helps me become a better writer. Learning other languages, you discover how to say the same thing in many different ways. In other words, you become more creative.
Don’t believe me? Keep reading and I’ll show you how languages can boost your creativity.
1. Language Learning Gives You a New Way of Seeing the World
In English we say “Goodnight” or “Sweet dreams”. In Hebrew people say ליילה טוב, which also means “Goodnight”. In Vietnamese, people say “Chúc ngủ ngon”, which means “have a delicious sleep”. When I think about the word “delicious” I think pineapple pizza, chocolate chip cookie cake, and coconut ice-cream. I don’t think about going to sleep.
Looking at it another way: if you are learning English for the first time, it maybe weird to say, “this fruit is melting in my mouth”, because it’s a bit odd if you translate it literally back to your native language.
So depending on the language, different phrases will flex your creativity and force you to think about how to say things in a different way.
The more you learn languages, the more creative you get in describing situations and saying things.
2. Language Learning Helps You Say the Unsayable
There are thousands of words in other languages that have no equivalent in English. Discovering these words broadens your overall vocabulary and gives you a bigger worldview.
Along the same lines, English is a mongrel language, made up of many tongues. When you learn another language, chances are that you’ll pick up some “English” words you never knew before.
You’ll also discover new ways of using English words. Take the German word for cell phone - “handy”. I love it!
3. Language Learning Gives You a “Sense of Humour” Transplant
Learning a second language is a lot of fun. When you can have a good time with it, it’s even better.
Studying a new language, you will notice that you have to learn a new sense of humour that comes along with the culture of that language.
Sometimes, jokes that work in English won’t work in French or Japanese. But sometimes cheesy things that nobody would laugh in English work in Vietnamese. I learned this when I performed stand up comedy in Vietnam. A lot of my non-Vietnamese speaking friends would ask me to translate the jokes for them, but when I translated back to English, no one laughed.
Even I think that some of the jokes I tell in Vietnamese aren’t funny. But that’s okay. I’m forced to stretch my creativity by finding my sense of humour not only in English but in Vietnamese as well. You can do this too!
4. Language Learning Improves Your Body Language
When you are not sure what word to use, body language, including some hand gestures, will help get the point across. Likewise, when you know the right word but your pronunciation is off, you have to use your body language to make it clear what it is you are trying to say.
Some people call this game “charades”, but other people (such as myself) use this regularly when they are learning a second language. The truth is, the more you can use your body language when you’re learning a new language, the better.
And don’t shy away from trying to convey difficult words, as that’s the best way to put your creativity to work. The harder the word, the more creative you are going to be with your emotions and actions. Getting someone to understand that you can to say “call” is easy. Getting them to guess “responsibility” isn’t so much.
5. Language Learning Makes You Better at Improv
When you learn a second language you don’t really have time to sit and translate one word at a time. Sometimes you have to act on impulse and just go with what you know.
You’ll have to use words you know to explain a word you don’t know. “A bird that swims” (duck/penguin). Or “really, really cold milk” (ice cream).
If you have ever had a conversation in another language, you will know exactly what I mean! (If not, don’t worry, your day will come soon). It’s not easy. It forces you to be quick. You have to think extra hard when you speak in a second language. It’s like playing an improv game.
6. Language Learning Improves Your Memory
When you learn a new language you have to learn a lot of vocabulary, new grammar structures, idioms, and much more besides.
Doing this this, you have to learn memorisation tactics. These could be flashcards, watching movies, using recall methods, or building a memory palace.
Whatever memorisation tactic you use, it will boost helps your creativity. Plus, research shows that memorisation helps you become more creative simply by exercising your brain.
7. Language Learning Makes You Comfortable With Failure
Being creative is tough. Whether you are producing movies, writing, or doing stand-up comedy - most of your ideas will end up in the trash can. Even the ideas that continue past that stage will most likely be ignored or rejected.
Creative people have to get comfortable with failure. You have to be okay if your ideas are not accepted.
When you learn a second language, you are forced to fail everyday again and again. In fact, the more you fail, the faster you’ll make progress.
You’ll make all kinds of mistakes. You’ll use the wrong word. People won’t understand your accent. You’ll mess up the stucture of a sentence.
You’ll fail. And that’s okay. Because every time you fail, you can learn from it. And you can improve from the failures. Each failure is just one more stepping stone toward success.
This helps you with your creativity because the more you fail as a creative, the more you are creating,. If you can accept failure, then you can keep being persistent and continue to put out creative work, or any work of that matter!
The Endless Feedback Loop of Creativity and Language Learning
Learning languages can be as fun as you want. The more creative you get with it, the better your experience will be. And since language learning boosts your creativity, the more you learn a language, the better you’ll get at coming up with creative ideas for language learning.
It turns out to be one big feedback loop. That’s why many people get better at language learning over time.
Next time you meet someone who speaks several languages, before you think that they have something special going on in their brain, take a step back and think. Maybe they do. But maybe they’ve got that special thing because they’ve made the effort to learn several languages. And effort is something we can all give.
If you are on a fence and wondering that if you should learn a new language, I think you should give it a try. It has more benefits than you’d ever imagine.
The post How Learning a New Language Boosts Your Creativity appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
February 16, 2016
How I Learned 5 Languages in One Year
My little daughter had just turned two. She was enrolled in early development programs with a “Kindergarten is Too Late” approach. We had no nannies or grannies to help clean our apartment or feed a hungry husband (a standard set of responsibilities for a Russian housewife on maternity leave).
Even with these seemingly overwhelming responsibilities, I was determined to learn new languages. Five languages, to be exact.
Sound impossible?
And why would I want to learn five languages?
It all started with the Michael Erard’s book Babel No More. If you love learning languages but hesitate to study more than one or two, you must read this book.
Babel No More draws upon the concept of neuroplasticity. Today, many of us memorize very little information. Why bother if all information is within arm’s length?
Learning a foreign language after graduation is one of the few ways for us millenials to train our memories. A good memory is extremely important for everyone during retirement years. We take pleasure in training our bodies, but we neglect to train our brains, even though learning a second language is such a simple way to stay sharp throughout our lives.
So, I opened my laptop and made a simple list of the languages I wanted to learn:
Monday – German
Tuesday – Spanish
Wednesday – French
Thursday – Chinese
Friday was free until August. Then I wrote Czech in the blank.
I thought about learning Japanese, but I decided that this language should be learned in a calmer, quieter setting.
I can now speak all five of these languages with varying degrees of fluency:
German (B2)
Spanish (A1)
French (A2)
Chinese (B2)
Czech (A2)
In the process, I improved my memorisation skills, and learned how to make the most of my freetime. Alongside all that, I gave my little Varvara (age 2) English classes.
My solution to improving learning? Time management for a polyglot!
Here’s how to follow such an intense schedule:
Step 1: Uncover Your Wasted Time
When you have at most three hours per day outside of work and family responsibilities, as I did, you start to value your time. You do not, however, have to study for 3 hours straight. It can be 20 minutes in the morning, 90 minutes at lunchtime, and another hour in the evening. I am writing this article from 4 am to 6 am.
Count how much time you spend on social networks. Multiply it by seven. Then multiply it by 52 and be amazed by the amount of time this year you could have spent making your dream come true.
If you want to do something, start today. Finish reading the article and start.
First, uninstall all social network apps from your phone. You will no longer be distracted by any messages (admit it, 99% of them are not urgent). Instead, install an app like Pomodoro that blocks your phone connection and wi-fi for 25 minutes and lets you concentrate undisturbed.
Following just this one tip will bring you closer to your dream.
Step 2: Optimize Your Routines (Or: Don’t Let Your Interests Annoy Your Family)
Frankly speaking, I have always felt held back by cleaning, cooking, and other household tasks. It is frustrating how much time we spend cooking one dinner or doing the daily washing when we could devote it to something interesting. Add a crawling baby to your home, and you have to radically change your approach to doing housework. To give myself more free time, I invested in a dishwasher, a steamer, a multi-cooker, and a vacuum-cleaning robot.
If I did the cleaning when my daughter was awake, she could play on her own or join me (In the latter case, I just needed to be patient and encourage her initiative and involvement).
Thus, I was able to organise my life and manage my household duties without sacrificing my precious personal time.
Whatever routines and chores you have, chances are there’s a way to make them more time-efficient. If you can save just 10 minutes for every hour you’re awake, that’s nearly 3 hours of extra free time.
Step 3: Make Personal Time Your Most Precious Thing
Decide that your private time is really important to you. You will not be able to create anything worthwhile or learn multiple languages if you do not have time to sit and think them over in the comfort of solitude. My private time was my daughter’s sleeping time. Some days I got lucky, and she slept 3 hours in the afternoon and went to bed at 9 pm. Other days I would have just 40 minutes during the day, and she would be up until 11 pm.
But no matter what - as soon as she fell asleep, I would go to study. I would not waste my time on anything else.
Your personal time is precious. Use it wisely.
Step 4: Make a Plan for the Next 12 Weeks
Imagine that your year lasts for 12 weeks instead of 12 months. Doing so will give you four deadlines in a calendar year instead of one Big December deadline (when many people realize that they have failed with their New Year’s resolutions).
We all know that setting a deadline is the best way to ensure that you get things done. Give yourself this gift: organise four deadlines in one year, and you will be surprised and proud of yourself in December!
Imagine that each week is a full month, and keep doing something every day. For me, that turned out to be the most effective time management principle ever.
Step 5: Stay Focused on the Goals You Set
I followed my list of five languages, and focused on one language per day. No, languages do not really mix. However, you will be amused when your French teacher says something in Chinese. It's difficult, but it makes the brain work!
I had several goals: take my Chinese and German level up to upper-intermediate; refresh my French and Spanish; and start with a new language (Czech). I met all three of those goals.
That being said, I would not recommend that you start with five languages, or even three, especially if you do not have a language background. However, it is possible to simultaneously learn two languages quite effectively by doing the following:
Self-learning with good resources (2 hours per day)
One session with a native speaker on Skype (30 minutes per day)
With Skype chats, I reinforced the material I had learned independently. That made my lessons with teachers more productive.
What I Discovered Learning 5 Languages in One Year
Honestly speaking, to live a year on such a schedule was quite a challenge. Without self-discipline, it would have never worked out. From time to time, I had to cancel my lessons simply because I needed to sleep.
However, if you have a language learning dream, you have to work for it. There is simply no other way, and the results are definitely worth all the effort.
In summary, here is what I recommend if you dream of speaking several languages but do not know where to begin.
Make a list of all the languages you want to learn.
Evaluate them based on the following criteria:
interest in a language (are you passionate or just curious?)
practical use (do you want to work with this language or ever travel to a country where it is spoken?)
availability of resources (is it a popular or rare language?)
Rate the language from 5 to 0 (5 if a language is exciting, promises a better future, or is very popular).
Total up the scores and pick the language with the highest total rating. Start with this language.
Create a 12-week plan that covers pronunciation, basic grammar, and basic vocabulary. Start practicing your writing and speaking as soon as possible (Follow Benny's free Speak in a Week course; it works brilliantly!)
Study at least one hour every day. Then, it’s very likely that you’ll reach A1 in almost any language in just 12 weeks. If you already speak the language, you’ll substantially upgrade your current level.
After 12 weeks, go ahead and take another language from your list if you still want to learn it. Learn the basics and remember to add Skype sessions to maintain your previous language.
If your goal is quantity, you could learn four languages at a basic level in just one year.
Good luck with your language studies!
The post How I Learned 5 Languages in One Year appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
February 9, 2016
5 Hacks to Learn Languages by Reading Literature
You can learn a lot from reading books in your target language. You can benefit from a book’s message and equally from its language. In other words, a book can improve your way of life and your language learning at the same time.
So, what’s the best way to read a book in your target language?
A language is not only grammar and vocabulary. A language is a completely different lens on the world. This means that when you’re reading a book in another language, the text is not only content but also shape. The words and expressions that were chosen by the author can be a great source of instruction both in language learning, and in giving you a new view of the world.
Are you convinced that it’s a good idea to read literature in other languages?
Remember that literature doesn’t automatically equal complex. Children’s literature can be both simple and profound - and is ideal for beginner learners.
In this article, I will show you five simple hacks that you can use to help you learn a language more effectively through reading literature.
Are you ready? Let's begin!
1. Keep a Dictionary Close to Hand
Looking up words you don’t know in a dictionary is the most simple strategy, and also one of the most effective. This method consists of reading the text, underlining unknown vocabulary, looking up these words in a reliable dictionary, then writing down their meanings.
I have applied this technique hundreds of times, and on the way I discovered two important strategies that substantially improved my results.
The biggest mistake I made was writing notes in any notebook or on any piece of paper and then forgetting them in some drawer. If you do that, your effort will be lost, because you will have access to this vocabulary only once. It is necessary to have a reliable notebook. Even if you mix all the subjects you study in a single notebook, it will not be a problem, as long as all your notes are easily available.
This leads to my second strategy, which is to keep a pocket notebook. This is a small notebook, which fits in your pocket, so that you can carry it around when you are not at home. This way, while you are waiting for a bus, on the subway, standing on a line or sitting in a waiting room, whenever you have idle time, you can to review your notes.
Nowadays, there is the option of a virtual notebook. Evernote is a virtual notebook that works on your smartphone. You can create notes with text, audio, checklists, photos, or anything else you want to remember. It’s very practical for day to day life, and perfect for jotting down vocabulary.
How can you remember all the vocabulary you’ve collected in your notebook? I recommend using Spaced Repetition Software such as Anki or Memrise. These flashcard applications are the most effective way to learn vocabulary, as they prompt you to remember words when you are on the verge of forgetting them.
2. Comparative Reading: Keep Two Books Side by Side
This strategy is more work than keep a dictionary to hand. Nonetheless, it is absolutely worth it. I call it “comparative reading”, It involves reading the original book and a translation at the same time.
This method is not solely about reading. It is also about taking notes. What kind of notes? Well, writing down interesting excerpts, commentaries, vocabulary, everything you figure will help you to learn even more. Again, these notes need to be taken in a reliable notebook, and should be easily available for future reference.
Speaking of notes, I’d like to share part of my notebook with you. It has some scribbles and probably some mistakes, but that's how things work. These notes are from Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, my favorite German writer. Note that there are several comments on the narrative and only two excerpts on this page. I tried to pick a page that was not scribbled on so much.
I admit that I have not read very many books this way and only used this method for the German language. One of the books I read applying this technique was "Der Steppenwolf" (The Steppenwolf) and it took me more than twice as long as usual.
Another way to apply this strategy is to use bilingual books. This is easier because you only need to handle one book at a time. But, you still have to take notes and follow the same rules: write your notes in a reliable notebook. Extract interesting passages, great sentences, and new vocabulary.
For the first book I read in French, I applied this technique. I had just entered university, I had never done a French course in my life and only knew enough to pass the entrance exam due to my studies three months before the exam. Digressions aside, this is the book I read in two languages:
Needless to say, reading a book in two languages is a really interesting and pleasant experience. You can read a book you love in a language you love - and learn more about both of them at the same time. How wonderful is that?
3. Read Comic Books (Pictures Aren’t Cheating!)
It is true ... I started reading French with Rimbaud, but I did not start Italian with Ungaretti. I was only 9 years old when I started to learn Italian and at the time, I was a voracious reader of comics. When I turned 10, I received a fabulous gift for Christmas: a series of comic books in Italian, which an Italian friend of mine sent via mail.
What bliss! Just imagine. Now, I could read the type of book I enjoyed the most, in the language I was learning! I felt amazed at how those magazines had come to me from the country of Italy, so far away...
[caption id="attachment_17742" align="alignnone" width="740"]
This comic book is very old, isn't it? The explanation: I received it 18 years ago.[/caption]I used to read it a lot. To this day, I enjoy reading comics, not just comic books, but also comic strips. The image-text combination makes it easier to understand the language I’m learning. Moreover, some comic strips can arouse a great feeling of sensitivity just like a beautiful phrase in a book.
Reading comics is a fun way to study, with wit and humour. It is worth spending a little time to read comic strips in other languages. I can show you an example. What do you think of this comic strip written in Spanish?
4. Read While Listening to the Audiobook
This is my favorite method! Reading while listening is one of the best ways I have found to study a language. Just as with the comparative reading strategy, you need to be ready to manage two books at a time, in this case, two different forms of media. But I assure you, nothing is better than listening to a native speaker while you follow the text.
Listening and reading at the same time is just a matter of habit. You’ll get used to it faster than you think. I know it may sound crazy, it looks like you will not be able to concentrate on both at once, but if you try, you will see that is not so difficult.
Listening as you read will improve your word-pronunciation association. You’ll begin to realize that you were pronouncing words incorrectly or that one word has more than one pronunciation.
You don’t have to start with a novel. Reading and listening to a poem at the same time can be a great way to start applying this technique.
A final remark: this method also works great when you are unable to focus on a very boring book, required by your university. I cannot remember how many books I have read in this way and for that reason. From Shakespeare to Proust, all the books that I considered boring or difficult were read exactly like this.
Worried about the cost of audiobooks? LibriVox is your solution. Librivox is a free resource with audiobooks in various languages and from many different authors. Of course, it is just classical authors, because their works are free of copyright.
5. Use Easy Reading Books for “Facilitated Reading”
Is Jane Austen too hard for you? Why don’t you try an adapted version for English learners? Easy reading books are a great way to learn a language. I call it “facilitated reading”.
Famous books adapted for language learners mean you can dip into great literature while developing your language skills. And the best part? They are divided into levels - from elementary to advanced. This means that even if you already are an intermediate reader, you can benefit. You don’t have to retrocede to a lower level to read an adapted book.
The greatest benefit that you get is that the book has been written with the purpose of teaching the language. Many of them have comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary exercises.
A second positive point is the possibility of reading with audio, as the vast majority of these books come with a CD. This way, you can apply my favorite strategy (see number 4, above), following along with a native speaker.
Easy reading books aren’t only available in English. A quick Google search will help you find easy reading books whatever your target language.
What Are Your Questions about Learning a Language Through Literature?
I hope you enjoyed the tips that I have presented. I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Please, leave a comment, and I will absolutely answer your question very soon! A big hug to you and see you soon!
The post 5 Hacks to Learn Languages by Reading Literature appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
February 5, 2016
4 Reasons French is Easy to Learn
However, I’ve heard from a lot of readers who are struggling with learning French. Shouldn’t they just give up completely or turn to their attention to one that seems far easier?
Don’t be silly! Why learn a language that seems more useful, when in a matter of weeks you could be having your first conversation in a language that will open you up to over 75 million speakers in over 50 countries?
French is not hard to learn, especially when compared to English!
That’s right. Learning French isn’t going to be as difficult as you think. In fact, it’s a language that is much easier to achieve fluency in than you would have ever expected.
Don’t believe me? Well, at least give me a chance to explain myself! Read on to find out why.
1. You’re Not Starting From Scratch
English and French share a common alphabet and a large portion of vocabulary. In fact, English has more in common lexically with French than any other Romance language (which include the likes of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian).
The Romance languages belong to the Indo-European family, as does English. However, we largely have William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England to thank for the abundance of French words within the English language. He led the successful Norman invasion of England in 1066 AD. William spoke no English when he ascended the throne and although he tried to learn Old English, he failed to master this foreign tongue. French was instead spoken within England’s courts for centuries after, which completely transformed the language to what we know it as today.
French rapidly became fashionable to learn amongst the social classes. It was spoken in schools and universities and within the court of law. Modern English words in the fields of medicine, economics, law and politics, which have a strong basis in Latin, bear a similarity to French.
English, a Germanic language that had previously had much resemblance to other Nordic languages, German and Dutch, began to take on words of Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French origin, which influenced the vocabulary permanently. You would be surprised at some of the words you probably use in everyday language that in fact had French origins, such as pork, blue and administration.
So if you’re fluent in English, you’ll already have a head start in French vocabulary. You’ll be familiar with the spelling, pronunciation and meanings of words such as café, debut, encore and petite, amongst many others. This makes French one of the easiest languages for native English speakers to begin speaking from day one.
2. French Is Simpler to Pronounce than English
Consider this.
If tomb in English is pronounced toom and womb is pronounced woom, then shouldn’t bomb be pronounced boom?
I’ve got another one for you.
Enough, rough, tough and then… slough!
How about those homographs! These are words that are spelt the same but have a different meaning. Examples include:
“I lead the dog to the water bowl that is made out of lead.”
“She wound the bandage around the wound.”
…What?!
English is not consistent when it comes to pronunciation. If you’re like me and you grew up speaking this language, rules like this will come naturally to you. You learnt them over time, through trial and error.
However, this can be extremely confusing for new learners. All languages have many rules. The problem is, English has about as many exceptions, as there are rules themselves!
French pronunciation can seem difficult at first. Like English, there are a lot of silent letters. Nouns can be pronounced differently depending on whether they are masculine or feminine.
Similarly, there are several rules for French pronunciation that can drive English speakers mad. Indeed, it may seem that French at first glance, is as tricky, complicated and inconsistent as English. I do however, have a point to argue against this case.
French is a language that English speakers come into contact with on a regular basis. It is deeply ingrained in our culture! France is hop, skip and a jump away from the United Kingdom and Ireland. A decent chunk of Canada is French speaking. It’s a popular option in Australia, where it’s mandatory to spend one year at school studying a second language. And I know if you were to ask many Americans what their dream destination was, Paris would be at the top of many people’s lists. I don’t blame them – I even proposed to my partner there!
When you start learning French, you’ll already know what you’re going to have difficulties with. You’ll be aware that you’ll have issues pronouncing that guttural ‘r’ at first. You’ll know that many words end on silent letters, such as in the case of comment ça va? You’ll be mindful of the fact that contractions are mandatory in the French language, such as in the case of “j’adore”.
This is knowledge that you’ll have been subconsciously building upon your entire life, will no doubt come in handy as you begin to wrap your head around the French language.
3. Gendered Words aren’t as Confusing as They Seem
While gendered nouns are prevalent in many European languages, they can be a source of continual frustration for English native speakers. English nouns do have gender – but the gender is tied directly to the biological sex of the noun, with inanimate objects remaining neutral.
As a result, gender rules can seem confusing and pointless to English speakers, who are left scratching their heads as to how on earth it was decided that the sun (le Soleil) is masculine while a car (une voiture) is feminine.
However, there is no discounting the fact that the knowledge of genders in French is important. Gender has influence on pronouns, endings of adjectives and verbs and the article placed before the noun. (Le, la, un, une and so on, so forth)
Luckily in French, there are several rules you can follow to determine the gender of an object. Here are some to consider:
Certain nouns referring to animals that can only be male of the species will be masculine, such as le taureau (bull). This is the same for feminine nouns, such as la jument (mare / female horse).
There are generic terms, which can refer to either a male or female of a species. Le mouton for example, can be a sheep of either gender.
Place names not ending in -e are masculine (Paris). If they do end in -e, they’re feminine. (L’Irlande)
You can pretty much guess the gender of a word, based on the ending. Words ending in –ment, -er, -eau and –ou tend to be masculine. On the flip side, -tion, -sion, -son and -ée are feminine.
Once you’ve learned the rules, you’ll generally be able to predict the gender of a word, using those guidelines.
Knowledge of genders is a requisite in learning many languages. Spanish, Italian and Portuguese all use two genders, while German and Russian use three. If you are already fluent or have some knowledge of any other of the number of languages that use gendered nouns, you’ll find yourself at an advantage in learning to speak French. For example, a Portuguese speaker would have less trouble learning French in this regard, than they would in English.
If your goal is to learn more languages and you’re starting with French as a native English speaker, breathe easy! The more you learn, the more genders will make sense to you and the easier it will be when you move onto your next language.
4. French People are Happy to Help You Learn French
I hate stereotypes! Although I found it extraordinarily difficult to get along with Parisians when I first lived in Paris, during the second time around, I was determined to remain open minded. I managed to leave with a more positive impression of the French overall after only a few hours there.
I realised that I couldn’t just expect for things in Paris to be exactly as they were in Ireland, or any other country I had previously lived in. I forced myself to be more understanding and as a consequence, I got what I had always hoped would happen – someone told me I spoke French très bien.
A Parisian said I spoke good French! Dreams do come true!
There are complaints that the French can be incredibly negative. If you can’t speak their language, they judge you. If you are learning their language and make a mistake, they’ll look down their noses at you with an air of disdain. Either way, you can’t win!
Upon genuinely understanding the culture more, I didn’t find these to be true at all. Most people I’ve met have been happy to help me when I’ve been stuck – you just have to ask for it. In fact, I’ve found it is English speakers that are more likely to ignore you when you make mistakes, out of fear of hurting anyone’s feelings! We’re a sensitive lot, that’s for sure.
If you’re struggling to understand spoken French, there’s no harm in politely asking whomever you’re talking to if they can slow down. I’m sure they’d be more than happy to oblige. I find listening to be one of the more challenging aspects of learning a language, but fortunately there are many free resources for French available online.
Go Forth and Conquer – Just Like William Did!
French is not a hard language to learn – indeed there are many aspects of it that make it a much easier and I daresay logical language than English.
So don’t get despondent and don’t give up. You’ll be eating your body weight in croissants in Paris before you know it!
The post 4 Reasons French is Easy to Learn appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
February 2, 2016
9 Reasons Vietnamese is Easier Than You Think
Pretty much impossible, if you ask the Vietnamese themselves. The supposed difficulty of Vietnam's official language is a point of national pride amongst its 90 million inhabitants, and locals are happy to tell you "tiếng Việt khó!" (Vietnamese is hard) at every possible opportunity.
So if you’re learning Vietnamese, or thinking about learning, it’s likely that all you’ve been getting so far is discouragement! In this article, I want to give you an alternate perspective, and offer you some encouragement, because chances are that Vietnamese is easier than you think.
It's true that, with six tones and a plethora of strange vowel sounds that we don’t have in English, pronouncing Vietnamese can be tricky. But most expats in Vietnam (of which I was one for a year) fail to realise that the pronunciation is just about the only difficult thing about Vietnamese. Every other aspect of the language is extremely easy - far easier that what you might expect, especially compared to most European languages.
Don't believe me? Here are ten reasons why Vietnamese is easier than you think:
1. Vietnamese Has No Genders
If you've ever learned French, Spanish, German, or just about any European language except English, you just breathed a huge sigh of relief. Vietnamese has no concept of "masculine" or "feminine" words. You can just learn the word as it is, without any need for extra memorisation.
2. Vietnamese Dispenses with “a” and “the”
If someone who was studying English asked you when to use “a” before a word, and when to use “the”, would you be able to explain? It’s a surprisingly complicated topic. The Wikipedia page on “articles”, as they’re called, is over 2500 words long!
But is it really that important whether you’re talking about “a” something or “the” something? It’s usually obvious from the context which one you mean. Far easier to just do away with them completely, which is what Vietnamese does. Người can mean both a person or “the person”, and you never need to worry about the distinction.
3. Vietnamese Doesn’t Have Plurals
In English, when we want to make something plural we usually stick an “s” on the end of it. “Dog” becomes “dogs”, “table” becomes “tables” and “house” becomes “houses”. However, there are many exceptions. “Person” becomes “people”, “mouse” becomes “mice”, “man” becomes “men”, and some words like “sheep” or “fish” don’t change at all.
In Vietnamese, everything is like a sheep. The word người, which I’ve already mentioned, can be used for both “people” or “person”; “cho” is “dog” or “dogs”, “bàn” is “table” or “tables”, and so on. If you think this would get confusing, ask yourself: can you remember a single time in your life when you heard someone talking about “the sheep” or “the fish” and you got confused because you didn’t know how many animals they were talking about?
If you really need to be specific, just slap an extra word in front of the noun, like một người (one person), nhũng người (some people), or các người (all the people). Easy.
And it’s not just nouns that are simple...
4. Vietnamese Has No Confusing Verb Endings
Pity the poor learner of Spanish. Even to say something as simple as the word “speak” (hablar), he or she has to learn five or six (depending on dialect) different verb endings for the present tense alone . I hablo, you hablas, he habla, we hablamos, and the list goes on. Factor in different tenses and subtleties like the grammatical “mood” (indicative vs subjunctive), and a single Spanish verb has over fifty different forms that learners have to memorize.
The technical term is that Spanish verbs (and nouns, and adjectives) inflect, meaning the same word can take different forms depending on the context. English isn’t nearly as inflective as Spanish, but we still do it to some extent - for example the word “speak” can inflect to “speaks”, “speaking”, “spoken”, or “spoke”.
Here's the good news: Vietnamese is a completely non-inflective language - no word ever changes its form in any context. Learn the word nói, and you know how to say “speak” in all contexts and tenses for all speakers. I nói, you nói, he or she nói, we nói, you all nói, and they nói. That’s dozens, if not hundreds of hours of work saved compared to learning almost any European language.
A corollary to this is something that will give anyone’s who’s studied a European language a sigh of relief:
5. Vietnamese Tenses Can Be Learned In Two Minutes
Vietnamese tenses are so easy it’s practically cheating. Just take the original verb, e.g. “ăn” (to eat), and stick one of the following 5 words in front of it:
đã = in the past
mới = in the recent past, more recently than đã
đang = right now, at this very moment
sắp = soon, in the near future
sẽ = in the future
(There are a few others, but with these 5 you’ll be fine in 99% of situations.)
To give you some concrete examples (“tôi” means “I”):
Tôi ăn cơm = I eat rice
Tôi đã ăn cơm = I ate rice
Tôi mới ăn cơm = I just ate rice, I recently ate rice
Tôi đang ăn cơm = I am eating rice (right now)
Tôi sắp ăn cơm = I am going to eat rice, I am about to eat rice
Tôi sẽ ăn cơm = I will eat rice.
Better yet, you can often skip these words entirely if it’s obvious from the context - for example “tôi ăn cơm hom qua” - “I eat rice yesterday” - is perfectly valid Vietnamese.
Congratulations! You can now express yourself in Vietnamese in any tense! Wasn’t that simple?
6. You Don’t Have To Learn a New Alphabet
You can thank the French for this one. Up until about 100 years ago, Vietnamese was written (by the tiny percentage of the population who were literate back then) using a complicated pictoral system called Chữ Nôm that's similar to today’s Chinese characters. Today, that’s been 100% superseded by a version of the Latin alphabet (i.e. the same alphabet that English uses) called Quốc Ngữ. So, unlike Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Thai, Cambodian, Korean, Hindi, or dozens of other Asian languages, there's no need to learn a new alphabet to read Vietnamese . All you have to do is learn a bunch of accent marks (technically “diacritics”), which are mostly used to denote tone, and you’ll be reading Vietnamese in no time.
In fact, learning to read Vietnamese is actually easier than learning to read English, because...
7. Vietnamese Spelling is Highly Consistent and Unambiguous
Quick question: how do you pronounce the English words “read”, “object”, “close”, and “present”? Well, was it close, or did you close? Did you present the present, read what I’ve read, or object to the object?
English spelling is extremely inconsistent, more than any other language I’m aware of, and the “same” word can often have different pronunciations depending on the context. Even the same letter can be pronounced a ton of different ways - like the letter “a” in “catch”, “male”, “farmer”, “bread”, “read” and “meta”. Combine this with a huge amount of inconsistencies, foreign spellings, and things that make absolutely no sense whatever (like the suffix -ough, and ESL students have one hell of hard time figuring out how English words should be written or pronounced).
Vietnamese, on the hand, has none of this nonsense. The same letter is always pronounced the same way no matter what the word or context (disclaimer: this holds true more for Hanoi Vietnamese than Saigon Vietnamese, which has a very small number of inconsistencies), and you can always tell from reading a single Vietnamese word exactly how it’s supposed to be pronounced. Once you can read the Vietnamese alphabet’s 28 letters (which, remember, are almost exactly the same as English’s 26), and understand its five tone marks, you can read any Vietnamese word. Job done!
8. Vietnamese Grammar is Virtually Non-Existent
I already mentioned how Vietnamese lets you leave out the tense word (like saying "I eat rice yesterday") if what you mean is obvious from the context. This is actually just one example of a wider point: Vietnamese grammar is incredibly simple. Most of the time, you can just say the minimum amount of words needed to get your point across and the result is grammatically correct Vietnamese, no matter how "broken" it would sound in English.
This is why you'll often hear Vietnamese people using incomplete English sentences like "no have" or "where you go?". They’re just translating directly from how they’d say it in Vietnamese, forgetting to apply the much more complicated rules that English insists on. It's a big disadvantage for Vietnamese people wanting to learn English, but it makes your life much easier as a learner of Vietnamese.
9. Vietnamese Vocabulary is Highly Logical
Most foreigners in Vietnam, even if they don't speak Vietnamese, will know the amusing fact that xe ôm - the local name for Vietnam’s ubiquitous motorbike taxis - translates literally as “hug vehicle.” But it doesn’t stop there - a huge percentage of Vietnamese vocabulary is formed by just combining two words in a logical manner, whereas in English you'd have to learn an entirely new third word that sounds completely different.
For instance, if I told you that máy means “machine” and bay means “flying”, could you guess what máy bay means?
There are more examples than I can begin to list, but to give you an idea: a bench is a “long chair”, a refrigerator is a “cold cupboard”, a bra is a “breast shirt” and a bicycle is a “pedal vehicle”. To ski is “to slide snow”, a tractor is a “pulling machine”, a turkey is a “western chicken”, a zebra is a “striped horse”, and the list goes on and on and on. This massively speeds up your learning of new vocabulary! As you build up a foundation of basic words, they become more than the sum of their parts as you automatically unlock hundred of new translations.
Vietnamese is Easier than You Think
Have I convinced you yet that Vietnamese just might be easier than you previously thought?
Hopefully I've managed to undo some of the myths and misconceptions you may have held around Vietnamese, and given you an insight into how the language works.
Are you inspired to study Vietnamese after reading this article? Let us know in the comments.
The post appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
January 29, 2016
Teach Me Spanish: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners
Spanish is relatively easy to learn, because once you’ve learned how to pronounce the letters, you can sound out any word. There are no complicated pronunciation rules, as there are in English.
On top of that, Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
Spanish also has a special place in my heart, being the first foreign language that I ever became fluent in.
Where should you begin with learning Spanish?
Starting a new language can be daunting, especially if it’s your first time trying it outside of a classroom environment. Where to begin? What’s the most important material to learn right away, and what can wait until later?
Let’s take a look at what you should do in the first hour, first day, first week and first month of learning Spanish.
Teach Me Spanish: Equipment and Time
Before we begin, you will need the following:
Notepad
Pen
Computer or tablet with internet connection
Optional extras:
Spanish phrasebook
$10 - $20 per week to spend on language teachers
To follow this guide, you’ll need to set aside around four hours each weekend (I recommend scheduling out Saturday mornings), plus around 45 minutes per day on weekdays.
I also suggest you start at the weekend to give yourself a “first day” boost.
Here’s where to start on that first day...
Teach Me Spanish: Your First Hour
Your first step in learning Spanish is to create a personalised Spanish phrasebook.
Why do this? In my approach to learning Spanish, you’ll focus on learning Spanish that’s relevant to you, your life, and your reasons for learning Spanish.
Get a fresh notebook, and a pen, and write “My Spanish Phrasebook” on the cover.
This notebook will contain the Spanish phrases that you need to know, rather than the one-size-fits-all phrases found in most Spanish courses and phrasebooks.
Let’s get that first page filled! Head to the Spanish phrases section of the Omniglot website, and write down the translations for:
Hello
Good Morning
Good Afternoon
Good Evening
Good Night
Goodbye
Whatever your reasons for learning Spanish, these are likely to be the words and phrases you’ll use more than any others.
As you write down the translations, click the Spanish word on Omniglot to hear the correct pronunciation. Say the words out loud as you write them down.
Also as you write out the phrases, pick apart what you write. In other words, look inside the phrases and see how the language works. Which part of the phrase means “good”? Which part means “morning”? Figuring this out for yourself is really powerful, because the act of doing so burns the vocabulary into your mind.
Teach Me Spanish: Your First Day
Your first day studying Spanish is a Scavenger Hunt of Spanish words and phrases.
Your aim for today is to collect essential Spanish phrases that are specific to you and your life.
In other words, you’re preparing to talk about who you are. By the end of the day, you should have gathered phrases that allow you to answer the questions:
What’s your name?
Where are you from?
What do you do for fun?
What’s your job?
Where do you work?
Remember, you’re looking for the words and phrases that enable you to answer these questions. When you’ve discovered a useful phrase, add it to your personalised phrasebook.
Where should you look? The internet is a fantastic resource, particularly if like me you’ve got a job or hobby that’s not in most phrasebooks (I’m a travel writer, author and speaker at conferences).
A phrasebook can also be helpful, as most phrasebooks include a pronunciation guide. Sticking with an old-fashioned paperback phrasebook also means you avoid the potential distraction of Facebook and email.
Finally, if you’ve got any friends that speak Spanish, give them a call and ask for their help.
As you write down the answers to these questions, don’t get too fancy. Keep the sentences simple for now, so they’ll be easy to remember.
Also, during your research, don’t worry about collecting every phrase you discover. Ignore irrelevant phrases and pick only the ones that you think you’ll use during your first conversation in Spanish (I’ll get to that part in a minute).
Try to memorise a few phrases as you write them down. That means speaking them out loud to yourself. Go over the phrases one final time once you’ve collected them all.
A word of warning: Don’t stress about grammar. That will come much, much later.
I like to think of learning a language as similar to learning to drive. You could spend weeks studying the inner workings of combustion engines, and reading books about the principles of driving, yet still not be able to drive around the block. You learn a car by driving. The same is true of learning a language. There’s no substitute for just doing it.
Teach Me Spanish: Week 1
One your first day, you started creating your personalised Spanish phrasebook. Now you’re ready to start using it!
You’ll use it in several ways:
First, revisit your phrasebook every day and work through the phrases you’ve noted down. This is the key to fluency: exposing yourself to the language over and over so that thoughts, phrases and responses come to you automatically.
Second, you should add five words to your phrasebook every day. Again, focus on adding words and phrases that are relevant to your life. If you’re not sure what to add, the following are useful for most people:
Numbers
Days of the week
Months of the year
Greetings and pleasantries (such as “How are you?” and “Pleased to meet you”)
Finally, you’ll use your phrasebook for your first Spanish conversation.
Before the end of this week, have your first conversation with a native Spanish speaker. I know it’s a scary prospect, but don’t skip over this part! It’s the only way you’ll actually learn Spanish.
Where do you find native speaker to practise with? I recommend italki, which will hook you up with Spanish speakers you can chat with over Skype. It gives you the option of meeting with a Spanish teacher (paid, though not expensive) or a language exchange partner (free).
Whatever you do, do not skip this step. It’s essential to learning the language, and the earlier you get started, the quicker you’ll progress.
If you’ve got the money (and it can be as little as $5) I recommend you do your first Spanish conversation with a teacher rather than a language exchange partner. Teachers are more likely to be patient with your slow speaking speed and your mistakes, and they’ll be experienced in helping you focus your learning efforts.
Language exchanges, on the other hand, are free. However, the downside is that you have to spend half the time helping your exchange partner speak your native language. Plus language exchange partners are likely to be less experienced in teaching a language.
Be sure to arrange with the tutor in advance to keep the lesson entirely in Spanish. This ensures that you’ll have a chance to practice all of the Spanish you’ve learned so far. Once you practice them with a real person, trust me, you’ll never forget them.
Need help building your confidence to take this step? Then sign up for my free Speak in a Week course.
Teach Me Spanish: Week 2
This week is all about embedding the vocabulary you’ve already learned, and expanding the tools you use to learn Spanish.
Your personalised phrasebook is brilliant for collecting new words and phrases, but it’s not ideal for helping you memorise vocabulary. There’s where Anki comes in.
Anki is available for iOS and Android, and it allows you to create your own deck of virtual flashcards to help you memorise words and phrases. What makes Anki really powerful is that is uses a Spaced Repetition System to help you memorise vocabulary. That means it prompts you to memorise words and phrases when you’re just on the verge of forgetting them. This is the most effective way of keeping them in your memory.
An added benefit with Anki is that you’ll have a study aid you can use anywhere. You can pull out your phone to review a few flash cards whenever you have a few spare moments, such as in an elevator or in line at the grocery store. By the end of the day, you’ll have memorized quite a few new words and phrases without ever having to set aside any explicit study time.
This week you should start reading in Spanish too. Check out my list of Spanish reading resources for ideas on where to start. Don’t expect yourself to understand everything - you’ll just starting out, so you’ll need help with most words. Keep a virtual Spanish-English dictionary so you can look up new words as you read.
When you read any phrases you’d like to learn, add them to your personalised phrasebook and your Anki flashcard deck.
Finally, keep speaking! Aim for two conversations with native Spanish speakers this week.
Teach Me Spanish: Week 3
By now you should have a sizable repertoire of you-specific vocabulary, enough for a short, simple conversation in Spanish about one or two topics that interest you.
That is, if you’ve kept up your practice. Have you? Chances are you’ve had some days when you felt super motivated, and some days when life happened and you didn’t do any language learning.
If you feel like you’ve stalled, this week is the time to put things right.
Something I’ve learned over the years in my many language missions is that it’s far more effective to distribute your total weekly study time over every day of the week, than to do all of your studying in one or two days. Studying less often means you have to spend more time in each study session reviewing what you learned last time. You also risk falling out of your routine and giving up on your language mission. So keep up the daily studying! Even if you can only commit to a few minutes each time. That’s where Anki comes in handy.
Your main task this week is to create a study schedule that works for you.
In your study sessions, keep adding to your Anki deck and your personalised phrasebook.
Did you know? On your Anki deck, you can add words or phrases. I’ve found that complete phrases are more helpful on a flash card than an individual word. Phrases give you context for the words along with correct examples of how to use them.
Finally: Don’t let this week go by without at least one conversation with a native speaker. Ideally, aim for three conversations this week. You should schedule as many face-to-face conversations (either in person or on Skype) as you can fit into your schedule. When you look back at the end of your first month and see how far you’ve progressed, you’ll find that conversations with native speakers were the cornerstone of your learning.
Teach Me Spanish: Week 4
This week is all about maintaining the healthy study habits you set up last week. Follow the schedule you set for yourself, and see how it works.
What if you find you’ve been too ambitious? Tweak your schedule so that it works for you. The important thing is that you study every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Set your sights too high, and you’ll overwhelm yourself and end up quitting.
Here’s what to focus on this week:
Keep adding to your personalised Spanish phrasebook and your Anki deck
Listen to a Spanish podcast or radio show (we’ve collected some of the Internet’s best Spanish listening resources). Don’t stress about understanding what you hear, just treat it as an immersion experience.
Find a Spanish song that you enjoy. Write out the lyrics then sing along.
Most important of all: aim for four conversations with native speakers this week.
Speaking should always remain top on your list. After all, your goal is to learn how to speak Spanish.
Teach Me Spanish: Month 2 and Beyond
Follow the schedule above, and you will surprise yourself with your progress. It’s amazing what having real conversations with native speakers does for your confidence.
Keep that confidence and swagger!
Around two thirds of any given conversation, article, song, podcast or article (in everyday use) is made up of just 300 words.
Fluency could be much closer than you think.
No matter what route you take to learning Spanish, just be sure to do what works for you. That’s the only sure-fire way to learn, and keep learning, your new language.
What approach do you take when learning Spanish? Let me know in the comments.
The post Teach Me Spanish: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
January 26, 2016
Why Tonal Languages Aren’t as Hard as You Think
Mandarin Chinese. English. Russian. Arabic. You name it.
They all have their own challenging aspects. But - here’s the kicker - humans can speak all of them. I’ve yet to hear about a language that went extinct only because it was so difficult to learn. If I’m wrong, please let me know.
All that said, some languages appear harder than others. Don’t they?
Some have genders. Some have more tenses than others. Some have different alphabets.
Some even have tones.
“Oh, nooooooooo! Tones!”
A lot of people feel intimidated by the prospect of learning a tonal language simply because they think it’s so hard.
In this article, I’ll show you why tonal languages are not as hard as you may think.
But first of all, remember this: English uses intonation.
Tones in English
Think about the word “really”. Depending on the tone you use, it can be used to express disappointment (really?), surprise (really!), or sarcasm (really…).
The only difference with English is that the tones aren’t as fixed as they are in tonal languages. With tonal languages, tones aren’t always fixed (for example in songs, or when you’re yelling), but they’re generally consistent, and they’re part of the grammatical structure of the language.
Whereas in English, tones are used to express emotion.
Looking at the example of “really” again:
If you say, “Really?” then you’re asking a question.
If you say, “REALLY!” then it shows excitement.
If you say, “(Hmmm) really…”, than it expresses doubt or negative emotion.
That’s why it’s difficult to detect emotion when we send messages on our machines. On smartphones and computers it’s hard to tell what kind of tone of voice we are using. That’s why we have EMOTICONS ;)
English speakers usually use a high intonation when asking a question and a low intonation when bearing negative news (think when somebody gives condolences for a relative who recently died).
But, I’m not trying to argue that English is a tonal language. It’s not.
I’m just trying to make it clear that English uses tones to communicate, whether we realize it or not, and learning a tonal language isn’t as foreign or as difficult as we think it is.
If you speak English, then you’re already familiar to some tones.
In Vietnamese and Thai, the rising tone is very similar to the intonation English speakers use when asking a question.
Or to take another example, think of a little kid shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I dunno!” The intonation you are thinking of is very similar to the hỏi tone in Vietnamese.
Though tones from English may not line up perfectly with new ones you will learn in a tonal language, sometimes they are quite close, giving you a nice little head start.
Can “Tone Deaf” People Speak a Tonal Language?
Maybe you’re reading this thinking…
“But, wait! What if I’m tone deaf?!”
This is another preventative wall people often put up. I’m here to tell you that you are wrong (no offence).
I’m a musician, and some people may tell me I have an easier time recognising tones when I’m learning a tonal language due to my musical background.
The truth is, I know plenty of musicians here in Vietnam that can’t speak Vietnamese one bit. I also know plenty of Vietnamese people that can’t sing well!
Being a musician may help, but mostly because musicians love sound. You can love it, too.
If you believe that you are at a disadvantage because you are not musically talented or you are tone deaf, then you’re wrong.
When I was in high school, a Brazilian exchange student named Eduardo lived with me for three months. When he first arrived, he could barely speak any English. After three months, we became best friends and brothers, and his English was phenomenal.
One day, about a month after he arrived, we were hanging out with my friend, Ashley. At the time, Eduardo’s English was pretty good, but he was still learning and making mistakes. We were walking from my house to the park down the street and we decided to sing some songs to pass the time. Classic high school thing to do!
Eduardo and I started singing whatever Taylor Swift song was popular at the time, but Ashley didn’t join in.
“You don’t like this song? Come on, sing!” I encouraged her.
“No, no. I can’t,” she replied.
“Why not?” Eduardo asked in his heavy Brazilian accent.
“You don’t want me to sing, trust me. I’m tone deaf,” she replied.
Eduardo’s face suddenly became serious.
“On my god! Have you gone to a doctor for help?”
Ashley and I busted out laughing! But, Eduardo had no idea what was going on.
She explained to him what she meant. Then we all had a chuckle. Except Eduardo didn’t really think it was funny, because he translated “tone deaf” literally into Portuguese, which didn’t make sense. had never heard of the concept “tone deaf” before.
What’s the point of this story? “Tone deaf” is not real as long as you don’t believe that it’s real.
[caption id="attachment_17671" align="alignnone" width="740"]
Nature is real. Being “tone deaf” is not.[/caption]Musicians may have a little bit of a head start because they tend to pay more attention to sounds, but you are just as capable. I don’t care how bad your singing voice is or whatever excuses you may make up in your head.
You are able to learn a tonal language and you are not at a disadvantage. You just have to remind yourself of` that.
Another reason you can learn a tonal language easily is...
Tonal Languages Have Fewer Words to Learn
With tonal languages, you don’t need to memorise nearly as much vocabulary.
In Vietnamese, ma (ghost), má (mother), mà (but/which), mả (tomb), mã (horse), and mạ (rice seedling) all have different meanings. Same letters, but different tones.
Once you conquer the tones, it’s easier to add vocabulary because you have fewer combinations of words to choose from.
Tonal Languages Often Have Simpler Grammar
For most tonal languages, there is no verb conjugation, no tenses, and no gender.
For example, in Vietnamese, “Hôm quá, em đi đâu?” means, “Where did you go yesterday?
Its literal translation is: “Yesterday, you go where?”
To talk about the past or the future, you simply add one word. But, in this situation, you don’t even need to, because it’s already implied that you are talking about the past when you say yesterday.
You also don’t have to worry about conjugation or tenses (my LEAST favorite part about learning French) at all!
Literal Vietnamese translation breaks down as follows:
Tôi muốn ăn cơm:“I want eat rice.”
Em ấy muốn ăn cơm: “She want eat rice.”
Ngày mai họ muốn ăn cơm: “Tomorrow they want eat rice.”
For negation, you just add one word (không) and the rest of the sentence remains the same.
Tôi không muốn ăn cơm: “I no want eat rice.”
Pretty simple, huh?
What’s the Best Way to Learn a Tonal Language?
Learning a tonal language takes time and effort (so does learning ANY language!), but here are some tips and tricks that will surely help you in your journey.
And remember to be patient...
No one sits down at a piano for the first time and knows how to play a 12 bar blues in E minor.
No one can juggle 5 bowling pins the first time they try juggling.
No one can complete a triathlon the same day they learn how to swim and ride a bike.
You get the point. Building skills like these take time; you’ll need to be patient.
Step 1: Start with Exposure and Mimicry.
Studies prove that the first time our brains are exposed to tones, we can’t differentiate them. However, after a certain amount of exposure (a few weeks or maybe even a few months, everyone is different), we’ll have a breakthrough and we’ll be able to recognize tones and differentiate them.
Think about a baby boy in China learning Mandarin Chinese. He’ll start learning words and sounds far before anyone tells him how many tones they are, or what they look like on a graph.
How’s he going to learn these words and sounds? By mimicking his mom and dad.
So, instead of studying and analyzing the tones first, start by listening to them. Search the web for videos in your target language. Listen to radio stations. Stream music.
Even if you can’t understand anything and it sounds confusing, just listening to the language will help you learn the flow and rhythm, as well as getting you familiar with the tones.
As you listen, try to mimic what you hear. Start by mimicking words and short sentences. It won’t matter that you don’t know what you are saying, because just by speaking, you are allowing your brain to become familiar with the tones. Think of it as listening to a song and then repeating back only the melody.
Remember to be patient. Everyone struggles through this stage.
Step 2: Master the Alphabet (Exception: Chinese)
If you can’t pronounce the new sounds of your target language, then the tones are going to be even harder to learn.
Fix this by mastering the alphabet (with Chinese being the exception to this rule). That way, once you try to tackle the tones, you’ll be familiar with the sounds and be able to pronounce the words correctly.
Adding new sounds and new tones to your “vocabulary” will be overwhelming, and you might even confuse the two. Learning whole words and grammatical structures can wait. It doesn’t matter how many words you know or how well you can write a sentence. If you don’t know the tones, then no one is ever going to understand you when you speak.
Step 3: Learn One Tone at a Time
Don’t overwhelm yourself and learn all of the tones at once.
If you do this, it’ll be the same as when you go to a party and you are introduced to eight people all at once. After shaking their hands, you’ll realize that you didn’t remember a single name.
Instead, learn one tone and spend a week or two practicing it. Once you are confident, then move on and learn the next one. Every time you learn a new tone, you should review the tones you’ve already learned by comparing them to each other.
Physical actions can help with this. Have fun with it! Rising tone? Stand up on your tippie toes. Low tone? Make an angry face. Heavy tone? Hold out your fist. The more fun you have the easier it will be to remember.
[caption id="attachment_17673" align="alignnone" width="740"]
If you jump up and down like this every time you practise the rising tone, I guarantee you’ll remember it. Or, you’ll get really tired. Or, both![/caption]Step 4: Apply the Tones You Learn to English
Before applying the tones to new vocabulary, practice the tones on a non-tonal language that you already speak.
It’s going to seem awkward at first. But, trust me, it will help. If you introduce too many new concepts (vocabulary, pronunciation, AND TONES), it’ll be overwhelming and no fun at all.
Once you can apply the tones to English words you already know, then you’ll be able to recognise them more easily. Then, you can start using them with vocabulary in your target language.
Step 5: Find Native Speakers to Practise With
You can’t learn tonal languages alone. Well, you may be able to, but it’ll be a long and hard process.
You’re going to need help from someone who knows the language. It can be a teacher, a friend, or your landlord. Just make sure they’re willing to take the time to help you out.
If you are living in a country where your target language is spoken, practise speaking with the locals as much as you can. Listen to them and try to mimic them as much as possible.
If you’re learning Thai, go to the family owned Thai restaurant near your house and tell them you are learning Thai and try to practise. I’m serious. Two years ago, when I was in New York City, I took two 45-minute subway rides just so I could go to a Ghanaian restaurant to eat Ghanaian food and practice my Twi. The restaurant owners were so happy! Not only did they help me with my Twi, but they also gave me a discount on the meal!
And don’t be afraid to make mistakes!
Think of it as learning how to ride a bike. It’s hard to get the feel for it at the beginning, but once you figure it out, it suddenly clicks. As you’re learning, you may fall from time to time (in this case, forget the tones or make mistakes), but every time you get back on the bike, you’re one step closer to riding it like a pro.
Another thing you can do is record yourself practising your tones and send the recording to a native speaker and ask them to correct you. I actually did this to practise my Patois (Jamaican). I sent voice messages through a messenger app called Whatsapp. My friend would respond using the correct accent, and then I’d try to mimic her the best I could. You can find language exchange partners to do this with using the HelloTalk app.
My favourite site to connect with native speakers on the web is italki.
When you need help, just ask. Most people love to help others learn their language. If they agree to help you, ask if you can take them out for coffee or lunch once or twice a month. Alternatively, for long distance friends, ask if you can do a Skype call.
You’ll never know until you ask. Before I moved to Vietnam, I reached out to my high school friend, Huy, and told him that I was moving there.
I hadn’t talked to him in over 4 years, but he was super excited that I was going to his native country. He even offered to help me learn Vietnamese! Even though he was in busy in medical school, he still taught me for an hour on the phone before I left.
The vocabulary he taught me ended up being more useful than anything I could find in books or online.
When the Going Gets Tough, Just Keep Going
Even when things are difficult and you want to quit learning a tonal language, keep going. It’s worth it! Without patience, none of the steps above will do you any good.
It will take time to master tones. But, try your best not to get frustrated, and you’ll see for yourself that learning a tonal language is not as bad as you may think.
When I first started learning Vietnamese (fall of 2013), I was stubborn.
I neglected the alphabet and the tones. I refused to pay for a teacher because all of them insisted that I learned the alphabet and the tones. I wanted to learn words and phrases, not sounds!
I was not patient.
After casually (and inefficiently) learning Vietnamese for about 8 months, I still didn’t know the alphabet or the tones.
Then, I spent 25 days on a reality TV show speaking only Vietnamese, and I was finally forced to figure it out.
One month after I got back, I participated in a stand up comedy compilation. All in Vietnamese, of course.
I am not Superman. In fact, I am far from it. I am lazy, unfocused, and impatient. Plus, I never hired a teacher because I stubbornly convinced myself that I couldn’t afford it! But, if I could manage to get on TV telling jokes in a tonal language, then you are more than capable of and speaking one!
The only thing stopping you is yourself.
Now tell me: What tonal language have you neglected because you thought it was too hard?
The post Why Tonal Languages Aren’t as Hard as You Think appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
January 22, 2016
How to Speak Korean – It’s Easier than You Think
[caption id="attachment_17635" align="aligncenter" width="506"]
Google searches for "Korean", 2009 - 2015[/caption]“Gangnam Style” by Korean pop icon Psy was the first YouTube video to reach one billion views (and the first to hit two billion views).
[caption id="attachment_17639" align="aligncenter" width="634"]
Korean pop star Psy performs "Gangnam Style".[/caption]K-Dramas - Korean television dramas - are a rising trend that’s set to take the world by storm.
Korean novels such as Please Look after Mom are starting to enter the international bestsellers list too.
[caption id="attachment_17636" align="aligncenter" width="272"]
Bestselling Korean novel, "Please Look After Mom".[/caption]What’s more, South Korea is a young, tech-savvy country that’s home to popular tech brands including Samsung and LG.
Why not make Korean the next language you learn?
Is Korean Difficult?
Although Korean might be ranked as one of the more difficult languages to learn by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), it is by no means impossible. In fact, compared to Japanese and Chinese, Korean has some huge advantages that make it easy to learn. Let’s find out more about these.
Why the Korean Alphabet is Easy to Learn
The first step in learning the Korean language is becoming familiar with the Korean alphabet, as it’s likely considerably different from the other languages you’re familiar with. When first seeing the Korean alphabet, many people assume that it is just a bunch of squiggles and that it is as impenetrable as learning the thousands of Chinese characters that students of Mandarin face. Believe it or not, this causes some learners to give up before they even start!
While there are ways of learning Chinese and Japanese characters quickly, the Korean alphabet is nothing like Chinese characters. It is far easier to learn than even the Japanese ‘script’ alphabets of Katakana or Hiragana, and maybe even Cyrillic. The reason for this goes back centuries and lies in its origin.
Unlike other alphabets that grew organically, Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was invented. Not only was it invented, but it was made with the specific purpose of being easy to learn and use. Basically, it’s almost impossible to design a simpler writing system than Hangul that would still work with the Korean language.
It is said that “a wise man can acquaint himself with them [the alphabet] before morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.” The truth is that using modern learning techniques, anybody can learn Hangul in just ninety minutes.
Think about that for a second – this language was constructed with language learners in mind! Hangul exists not to confuse and intimidate learners, but rather to give them the quickest access to Korean culture possible. The alphabet itself is not intimidating at all – the only intimidating part is the initial unfamiliarity you can get past in less than ninety minutes.
With only twenty-four letters in the Korean alphabet, it doesn’t take long to learn. Equally, while some writing systems look impossible to scribe, Korean is easy. One of the letters is a circle, one is a square, and two are literally straight lines!
Hangul has another huge advantage over Chinese characters in that it is phonetic. Even if many Chinese characters may have phonetic elements to them, Korean is entirely phonetic. There aren’t hidden sounds or pronunciations that new learners are expected to know right off the bat. In fact, it has this advantage over the Latin alphabet too. For example, if you are an American travelling to the U.K. and you come across a sign saying ‘Leicester’. You may well assume that this is read ‘Lie-kest-er’ when it is in fact pronounced ‘Lester’.
There are countless examples of this in English and in the Romance Languages. For example, there are many different ways to pronounce ‘ough’ in English. The differences in spelling and pronunciation can make it difficult to put two-and-two together. Yet, you are fluently reading English right now, despite the tricky spelling and pronunciation that comes with the territory.
If you can read Hangul, then it is very rare that you will have similar problems with pronunciation. When pronouncing a Korean place or name, there are only a handful of situations where the pronunciation isn’t exactly the same as how the word is written. Luckily, you can easily learn these exceptions in no time!
That’s why it’s easy to connect written and spoken Korean. For example, if you hear somebody talking about going to an ‘an-gwa’ then you might remember that word when you are walking down the street and see a sign saying ‘안과’ above a shop selling spectacles. The link between the sound and the written word makes it easier to remember these new words. After you become familiar with the characters in the language, acquiring new Korean words will happen in no time!
Hangul is so easy to learn, that an online comic can teach it to you in 15 minutes!
Word Families: How Korean Words Are Built
You might be thinking ‘if the Korean alphabet is so logical, then why are all the letters jumbled up instead of just being in a straight line?’ Well, this is the genius part of the Korean alphabet that makes learning new words and ideas very simple! However, it is most likely different from the letter orders in the alphabets you are most familiar with using.
In Korean:
‘ㅅ‘ sounds like ‘s’;
‘ㅏ’ sounds like ‘a’;
‘ㄴ’ sounds like ‘n’.
When put together they look like ‘산’ , which is pronounced as ‘san’. Rather than being just three letters in a line, it makes a nice self-contained block!
Korean is essentially made up of three types of words:
Words that are ‘pure’ Korean;
Words that are based on English (we will come to these later);
Words that are based on Chinese characters.
When we see 山 in Chinese we know this means mountain. Equally, in the Korean words that are based on Chinese, each block in Korean has the same meaning as a Chinese character. 산, in this context usually means ‘mountain’. This means that any time we see 산 at the end of a word, we can guess that it probably has something to do with a mountain. Easy enough, right?
In English, the spelling of the words ‘volcano’ and ‘iceberg’ are totally different from ‘mountain’. In Korean, they are 화산 (fire-mountain) and 빙산 (ice-mountain). This can help you learn words very quickly and guess new words without ever seeing them before. When you learn one word, you will have access almost instantly to other words and phrases that build upon that first word.
For example, from our earlier word 안과, if we are walking around the streets and see words like 내과, 치과, 피부과, etc., then we can guess that they have something to do with medical care. Equally, if somebody asks if you wear 안경 then we can guess that they are talking about glasses.
Look at the following list to see how quick it can be to learn new words using a bit of logic.
1 (and sun) = il
2 = ee
3 = sam
4 = sa
5 = o
Moon = wol
January = il-wol
February = ee-wol
1st March = sam-wol il-il
2nd April = sa-wol ee-il
3rd May = o-wol sam-il
Country = guk
Korea = han
Middle = jung
Person = in
Language / fish = eo
Korea = Han-guk
China = Jung-guk
Korean language = han-guk-eo
Chinese person = Jung-guk-in
Mermaid = in-eo
How to Pronounce Korean Words: No Tones
When you begin learning Korean, you’ll start with learning how to read words in the Korean alphabet, then move on to learning how to pronounce those words. While learning pronunciation can be intimidating at first, it’s easier with Korean that with many other languages. Each Korean word, or letter-block, has several different meanings. However, they are all pronounced the same way. This is great news as you don’t have to worry about tones,. Tones are an entire additional element to language that can make the learning process much more complicated.
Of course, the fact that one word can have many different meanings can be confusing. For example, 어 (pronounced like the ‘o’ in the word ‘song’) often means either ‘fish’ or ‘language’. However, realistically, how many times are you going to be having a conversation that involves both fish and language? Context clues are everywhere in Korean and will greatly speed up the learning process for beginners.
Konglish: You Already Know Thousands of Korean Words
Every day new words are added to languages. The good news is that with Korean, these new words are often based on English. That means that every day you are getting better at Korean without even studying (unless you are North Korean)!
Some Korean words such as computer, taxi, and ice cream are almost exactly the same as English words in both their meaning and pronunciation. Other words are based on English, but have slight differences to standard English. However, because they are based on English words, they are easy to remember.
As a speaker of English beginning to learn Korean, you will find that you are already pretty familiar with some Korean language words and concepts – it’s almost like the work was done for you! The parallel between Korean and English words isn’t the only easy part about learning Korean -- Korean tenses and grammar are also much more straightforward than languages like French and Spanish.
Korean Grammar Is Really Easy
If your average French class at school consisted of hour upon hour of ‘I am’, ‘he is’, ‘they are’ and so on, then try not to jump for joy when I tell you that you don’t need to do this in Korean.
In fact, when you start out learning Korean, it’s best not to bother with pronouns at all. When learning Korean, you can speed right through conjugation pretty quickly. Korean verbs change based on several factors, such as tense and politeness level. However, even when they do change, then they change in a predictable way based on the final consonant of the verb (or vowel if it ends in a vowel).
Since there are a limited number of consonants, and only about five types of irregular verbs, learning how those verbs change doesn’t take long. Even better, the verbs stay the same when the pronouns in the sentence change. For example ‘to do’ (하다) will always be 해요 (do) regardless of whether ‘I do’, ‘he does’, or ‘they do’.
Pronouns are rarely used in Korean, so you can often just say the verb. The other person can guess from context who you are referring to. As a result, here is a verb conjugation list for the verb 먹다 (to eat) in the present tense:
I eat – 먹어요
you eat – 먹어요
he eats- 먹어요
she eats – 먹어요
they eat – 먹어요
we eat - 먹어요 (in case you didn’t notice, they are all the same).
I have more good news: this applies to adjectives too! If you want to tell somebody that the gimbap, a popular Korean street food, was delicious, then you can just say ‘delicious’. Likewise if you want to ask somebody else if that food was delicious then you just ask, ‘delicious?’
Tenses in Korean are also regular, so you don’t need to learn extra words like you do in English (teach-taught, is-was, etc.). There aren’t any special past participles, either. Instead you just stick an extra word onto the end of the sentence to change it from ‘ate’ to ‘have eaten’. Easy enough, right? Luckily, due to how straightforward grammar and tenses are in Korean, you can make a lot of progress in learning Korean before you have to tackle the more complex elements of the language.
Deal With the ‘Difficult’ Parts of Korean Down the Road
When learning Korean, you can put off the difficult parts of the language for later.
One difficult aspect of Korean is that it is a hierarchical language. This means that you use different words depending on who you speak to. While this sounds daunting, if you just use the regular form of the word (verbs that end with ‘yo’) then nobody will be offended. Stick to the “yo”, and you’ll be good to go!
Apart from that, if you use the wrong word with somebody who is older than you, the worst that will happen is that they will correct you (optimists could see this as ‘the worst that will happen is that you will receive some free expert tuition from a native speaker’).
As you get better at Korean, you can start using the different levels of language properly and fluidly. However, you don’t have to get worked up about early on in your language study. There’s no reason to be apprehensive about using your new Korean knowledge with native speaking strangers – if anything, it’ll only stand to help you acquire more knowledge!
If you are wondering how honorifics and hierarchy work in Korean, basically there is a way of speaking for people who are close to you, and a way for speaking to people more distant. The more distant version (ending in ‘imnida’ or ‘sumnida’) often comes up in textbooks early on. However, you will only ever use it if you are doing a job interview, giving a presentation, or speaking on the news (things that are unlikely for beginner students to be doing). Therefore you should focus on the ‘yo’ system, which you will be using much more often.
If you are speaking to somebody who is younger than you and close to you, then you can drop the ‘yo’. This will be handy when you begin making Korean friends and acquaintances. Honorifics are used for showing respect to people above you. This basically involves inserting a 시 somewhere into the verb (not too difficult in itself).
Some words have special versions that should be used when speaking using honorifics. For example ‘to eat’, ‘to exist’, ‘birthday’ and ‘age’ all have special words (there aren’t too many special words, only about twenty or so, so don’t worry). You should never use honorifics when talking about yourself, but unlike Japanese, you can use them when referring to your own family (especially your grandparents).
These different levels of Korean often scare people, but English and other languages also have these levels (For example, “to die” vs. “to pass away”). When you think about it, Korea’s hierarchical system is easier to explain than trying to explain these levels in the English language, and you’ve already been using a hierarchical system for years whether or not you’ve realized it!
Once you’ve learned the more approachable parts of Korean like the alphabet, tenses, and words based on English, you’ll feel comfortable enough to begin using Korean conversationally. It’s through conversation and exposure that you’ll become more comfortable with the more complex parts of the language like hierarchical changes and words that aren’t based on English.
Breaking Apart Korean Words
Using Korean words is very simple. If you want to use them as a verb, then you can just stick the verb ‘to do’ (하다) at the end of the word. Once you learn how to change this verb into different tenses and how to attach modal verbs to it, then you can suddenly say a ridiculously large amount with very little effort.
Remember, you rarely need to use pronouns and you don’t need to conjugate based on pronouns. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you will learn how to communicate basic concepts in Korean with relative ease!
Another thing that makes picking up these new Korean words and concepts a breeze is how accessible Korean-learning resources are. After you begin your journey to learn Korean and start looking around for help, you’ll be surprised about the abundance of resources available through books and the Internet.
Why It’s Easy to Find Resources for Learning Korean
Of course people have been speaking Korean for thousands of years – it’s not exactly a new language. However when learning Korean, you won’t have to learn using the Korean version of Shakespeare or anything equally antiquated.
The rest of the world started caring about Korean culture much more at the start of this millennium so most of the cultural resources for learning Korean are very new and easily accessible. There are many great online resources for studying Korean, and often teachers will give modern examples or use recent video clips when explaining difficult concepts. When studying the Korean language, the last thing you will be doing is looking through a dusty old textbook. Korean resources are current and relevant, making the learning process that much more fun! Along with modern cultural resources, you’ll also have the opportunity to learn by speaking Korean to native speakers as soon as you’re even a little bit conversationally fluent.
How to Get Korean Speaking Practice
Most Koreans are very proud of their country and language, and would love it if more people could speak Korean. As a result, there are plenty of people who are willing to teach you Korean. Especially in Seoul, it is quite easy to find free Korean classes.
Equally, Koreans rarely expect foreigners to speak Korean perfectly so they won’t judge you as harshly as people from some other countries if you mispronounce a word. Learn the basics with some help, and then get out there and experiment with all the doors that you’ve opened by beginning the Korean learning process! Those Korean dramas aren’t going to watch themselves…
The post How to Speak Korean – It’s Easier than You Think appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
January 19, 2016
The Goldilocks Technique: How to Set Language Goals that Are Just Right
In my 13 years of language learning, I’ve set myself some big language goals. Some have gone fantastically, and some have totally flumped.
Over time, I’ve got better and better at setting goals that inspire me to do my best, but that are also realistic
I’ve learned this through trial and error - using what I call the Goldilocks method (this is an idea I borrowed from fellow language learner Andrew Barr). Some of my language goals were way too big, and I failed to reach them. Some were far too simple, and they didn’t challenge me as much as they should have done.
The best goals were just right. These goals stretched and challenged me without overwhelming.
I’d like to share how you can use the Goldilocks technique to set language goals that are just right for you.
Step 1: Reach for the Skies
I called it ambitious, but some other people have had different names for it. “Ridiculous”. “Unreasonable”. “Impossible”.
Whether or not this is true, it hasn’t stopped me from aiming high and challenging myself.
I like to start by dreaming big. I think it’s far better to aim too high and then fail with just “pretty high”, than it to aim low, get bored, not push yourself and achieve way less than you could have.
Why are big goals good? You get to test your limits and push them as far as possible. You also end up accomplishing much more than you could ever have dreamed if your goal had been more modest.
A modest goal will give you the satisfaction of saying you achieved exactly what you set out to do. However, it won’t teach you to stretch yourself. It won’t push you to your limits and beyond.
There’s one question I hate to be stuck with: “How much further could I have gone if I pushed myself?”. I don’t like having this question lingering in the back of my mind. So I aim high.
That said, I want to make it clear that I only set goals I believe are possible to achieve. I don’t just aim for B2 in all my language missions then hope for the best.
For example, if I only have an hour a day to study, then pushing for B2 (CEFRL scale) in three months is way over the top. It’s why I haven’t had any such project for the last two years; until recently I’ve been travelling intensively for a world-wide booktour, which is time consuming and exhausting and means I’d rarely have more than that single hour free.
With this in mind, I’ve had to adjust my goals and have instead tried to cram as much Bahasa Indonesia as I could into 4 hours, be sure my French was at a C1 level so that I could follow the long road to a definite C2 level, reactivate my Mandarin after a long break, and even coach another person to learn another language quickly. So I know exactly if and when a three month project isn’t possible, and adjust to other goals when it isn’t.
How high you aim in your own language mission will depend on your own personal factors:
How badly do you want to learn the language?
How do you intend to use the language at the end of your mission?
Are you in an immersion environment?
If not, are you willing to set up a virtual immersion environment and put the time into make sure it you stick to it?
How much free time do you have to study and practise?
I’ll look at each of these factors below, and explain how you can expect them to affect your language mission. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to talk specifically about appropriate goals for a three-month language mission.
Step 2: Assess Your Motivation
Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to learn a new language.
Some people learn a language because otherwise they get brain itch. They need to be learning or they get bored. Are you constantly curious about the world? This could be you.
Some people want to get an inside view of another culture. They’d like to see the world in a new way, and learning another language is a brilliant way of doing this.
Still others learn a language for practical reasons. Perhaps they’ve married someone from another country, or they’re required to travel for their job.
Whatever your reason, it must be enough to keep you inspired day after day. Learning a new language is a wonderful thing to do. But there will be days when it’s a slog and you’ll feel like quitting.
It’s only by trying that you’ll see how deep your motivation runs. If you find you keep starting to learn a new language, then quitting after a few weeks, perhaps you need to investigate your motivation.
Sometimes when I really press people, I see that it just “sounds cool” to them to speak another language, or it’s on a long “bucket list”, or for bragging rights. None of these will ever motivate you to do the work necessary, so you need to really think about, and possibly change your big “why” for learning the language in the first place.
What if you still need an extra push?
I recommend joining an online language community like the Add 1 Challenge . You’ll meet other language learners who also want a push, and who will support you in your language learning. Accountability is a fantastic motivator. You will probably end up achieving far more than you expected.
Step 3: Set a Timeframe
Goals are meaningless unless you have a deadline in which you want to achieve them.
I originally started setting three month language goals because I’d be visiting countries on a three month tourist visa. I’d visit a country and immerse myself in the language and culture for three months, aiming to reach fluency in that time.
Back to Goldilocks, I’ve found that 3 months is in the zone of being not too little, so that I get a genuinely good idea of that culture and can make a couple of friends, but not too much, so that I could still explore several places. So I’d still spend 3 months in some countries even if tourist visa limits weren’t effective (like in the European Union, since I’m an Irish citizen).
It’s also the amount of time when I can work intensively on a project enough to both make huge strides of progress, and to push myself just enough to not burn myself out.
Even if I’m not able to travel, I find that setting a deadline of three months works well for me. It’s far enough into the future that it’s possible to achieve big goals. And close enough to the present that I can see the finish line.
So that’s why the timeline is relevant to me. Three months may be a completely random number to you though. It’s way better to pick a goal that fits with your lifestyle. Are you leaving on a trip in six months? Do you have a semester abroad coming up in 6 weeks? Do you have 2 months off for the summer and the time to realistically invest in such a big project? Is your grandmother who only speaks Czech visiting you in September? Then that is your ideal end-goal.
Step 4: Know How You’ll Be Using the Language
Are you learning a new language so you can:
Meet interesting people from around the world?
Travel the world and be able to order food?
Attend an overseas conference?
Conduct business deals in your target language?
Grow in confidence around other people?
We live in busy times, and most of us only have a little bit of time to spare each day for language learning. Knowing how you’ll use the language will help you use those precious minutes to the best effect.
If you’d like a more general goal, I recomend aiming for A2 level. It’s a reasonable target for three months of language learning, even alongside family commitments and a full time job. And it will mean you’ll be ready to hold interesting conversations with native speakers.
Why do I recommend setting a specific goal such as A2 level? If you don’t have a concrete goal to work toward, it will become too easy to just start letting your studying slide for days or weeks on end. After all, you have, literally, “all the time in the world” to learn the language. The problem is that “all the time in the world” quickly becomes weeks, months or years of procrastination.
Step 5: Stop Looking for the “Perfect” Language Learning Environment
Yes, it’s good to set big goals. But just as important is how you achieve those goals.
It’s easy to set big goals. It’s even easier to find excuses for failing to achieve those goals.
What can you do to avoid this? Stomp out potential excuses before they come up.
A common excuse is: “I don’t have the right learning environment”. Perhaps you feel too busy to learn, or concerned that you live thousands of miles from people who speak your target language.
There’s no perfect place to learn a language.
You can just as easily learn French from an air-conditioned office block in Australia as you can by frequenting the coffee shops of Paris.
The environment in which you’re learning your target language actually isn’t as important as you might think. So don’t let where you live hold you back from setting big language goals
You can learn a language at a fast pace no matter where you are in the world. Even if there isn’t a single native speaker if your target language within hundreds of miles of your home, it’s still possible to learn your target language quickly.
In fact, staying at home can be better than travelling. If you travel the world, it’s easy to get drawn into tourist cafés and ex-pat communities. This is especially the case if your native language is English. In most countries, you’ll find plenty of English speakers, and it’s easy to get on the slippery slope of thinking there’s no need to speak the local language, even just “while you settle in”.
That said, if you’re fortunate enough to be able to live abroad, take advantage of it. Challenge yourself from the beginning to never use the phrase, “Do you speak English?” no matter how difficult it gets (barring emergency situations, obviously). If you’re serious about your mission and commit to maintaining your immersion environment every day, then you’d be amazed at what you can do in three months. I know this is possible because not only have I had huge successes in many of my three-month projects, but many other people have too.
Step 6: Assess How Much Time You Can Set Aside for Studying
Along with motivation, the time you have available is the key factor in establishing what would be a realistic language goal for you.
Clearly, a person who’s able to devote three hours per day to language learning is going to achieve much more than someone who only has thirty spare minutes. This doesn’t mean that it’s bad if you can only study thirty minutes per day. It just means that you should set a different language goal for a three month mission than someone who has more time to devote to theirs.
As I’ve said, most people can realistically aim for the upper beginner, or A2 level, within three months. This is ambitious, but still perfectly reasonable if you study smart.
What if you want to stretch yourself even further? Then reaching the lower intermediate level B1 is within your grasp. At that level, you’d be able to have lower-intermediate conversations on a wide variety of topics, as long as the person you are speaking to speaks slowly and patiently. This will mean an intense study schedule of at least two hours a day, ideally more if it’s your first language project.
How much time can you realistically spare? Take a hard look at your typical daily schedule. You probably have a job that takes up the bulk of your day. Then there are after-work errands you need to run, picking up kids or dry cleaning. Plus socialising and any hobbies other than language learning.
Once you’ve decided how much time you can spare each day, cut that figure in half. Then half it again. So if you thought you could spare an hour, you’ll end up with just 15 minutes. That’s your minimum daily study time.
Why set such a low minimum? Because it means you’re more likely to stick with it, even when you’re busy or feeling overwhelmed. Also, getting started each day can be the hardest part. By setting yourself a low goal, you’re more likely to get started.
Then also try the opposite. If you think you can only spare an hour, then see can you push that further out? Would it be worth giving up Netflix (at least their English programming), reducing nights-out to once instead of 3 times a week, or making some other sacrifice, for three months to achieve a lifelong dream?
What if You Fall Short of Your Goal?
Let me make one thing clear: if, at the end of three months, you’ve not reached your goal, you have still succeeded in something else that’s also extremely important - provided that you maintained a daily habit of language learning. You have greatly improved your language level and know that you’ve truly pushed yourself to your absolute limit.
I’ve had a couple of projects where I ended up with a B1 level instead of a B2 level. Calling that a failure is insane - I could converse with another culture, make friends, travel independently and do so much! I acquired a new skill that will enrich my life. And I’ve learned what my limits are, and what I did wrong that I should change in my next three month project.
Having big dreams matters. We all need them, as dreams give us purpose and something to strive for. But just as important is taking action to achieve those dreams.
If you’ve stuck it out for the entire three months, through the rough parts and the plateaus, and you came out the other side speaking your target language substantially better than you could at the beginning, then you’ve succeeded.
There are many ways to succeed at language learning. The only way to fail at it is not to attempt it at all.
The post The Goldilocks Technique: How to Set Language Goals that Are Just Right appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
January 15, 2016
The Language Secrets of Prolific Language Learners
Audrey Hepburn remains an iconic goddess of the silver screen and is regularly touted as being the most beautiful woman to have ever existed.
She also spoke six languages.
J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, was not only fluent in numerous languages (some of which he taught himself)… he invented them.
Why were these particular people encouraged to learn multiple languages? Was it due to a necessity to survive or a need to communicate?
Most importantly, what can we as lovers of languages ourselves, learn from their words, lives and experiences?
Read on to find out!
Thomas Jefferson: The Language Lover Who Struggled to Learn Languages
The United States’ third president was a member of Virginia’s elite and spoke four languages. He learned to read Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish and French while being privately tutored – which was the norm for boys of his social class. He too had dictionaries from a number of languages in his library – including Arabic, Gaelic and Welsh, but no evidence exists that he ever gained any sort of fluency in these languages.
[caption id="attachment_17579" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
The United States’ third president Thomas Jefferson spoke four languages and learned to read Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish and French.[/caption]Although Jefferson could read the languages he had studied in his youth, he struggled with spoken fluency.
”I understand the French so imperfectly as to be incertain whether those to whom I speak and myself mean the same thing.” – Jefferson to William Temple Franklin, 1784.
It wasn’t until he had spent some time living in France as the American ambassador, that he was able to achieve fluency in the French language, falling hard for it along the way.
“The French language is unquestionably an important object of education. The habit of speaking it can only be acquired by conversation.” – Jefferson to Dugald Stewart, 1789.
Jefferson acknowledged quite early on the important relationship that the American people would share with the Spanish language and allegedly learned it while reading from a borrowed copy of Don Quixote and a book on Spanish grammar. We are allowed to be a teeny bit sceptical in taking this as fact, as former US President John Adams noted in his journal:
”As to Spanish, it was so easy that he had learned it, with the help of a Don Quixote lent him by Mr. Cabot, and a grammar, in the course of a passage to Europe, on which he was but nineteen days at sea. But Mr. Jefferson tells large stories…” –John Adams, 1804.
Whether or not Jefferson was blowing his own trumpet remains irrelevant to our cause. What we can learn from the ex-President is one very important detail - one that is regularly touted here on Fluent in 3 Months (Fi3M).
If you want to learn a language and achieve fluency in it, you need to start speaking it.
People often struggle with language in an academic setting. It’s not until after they leave the classroom and start living the language that true progress begins to be made.
Audrey Hepburn: “Nothing is Impossible”
Screen goddess Audrey Hepburn was a master of many tongues. The actress spoke six languages, reportedly fluent in English, Dutch, French, Spanish, German and Italian.
[caption id="attachment_17580" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
Audrey Hepburn, star of Breakfast at Tiffany's, spoke six languages.[/caption]Hepburn was the child of a Dutch Baroness and British businessman. Born in Belgium, she spent part of her youth attending private schools in the Netherlands and England, where she would have achieved fluency
in her native Dutch, English and probably French. In 1939, her mother moved the family back to Arnhem, Netherlands, believing they would be safe from World War II.
Unfortunately she was proved horribly wrong when the Germans invaded Holland in 1940. Hepburn, a young teenager at the time, began helping the Dutch resistance. She danced to raise money in secret productions and ran messages.
She later spoke of how she was forced to quickly learn Dutch upon the family’s move to Arnhem during WWII:
"My mother was worried about [my] speaking English in the streets with Germans all around." – Audrey Hepburn
Malnutrition during the war dashed Hepburn’s aspirations of becoming a ballerina – so she turned to acting. She and her mother left Amsterdam, travelling to both England and finally the US, where Hepburn became the Hollywood icon she is remembered as today.
Her career took her all around the world. She shot films in France, Spain and Mexico, lived in Rome and travelled extensively during her time working as an Ambassador with the charity UNICEF. Looking back on her life and career, you can see that she had multiple chances to learn languages – opportunities that she obviously made the most of.
”Opportunities don’t often come along. So, when they do, you have to grab them.” - Audrey Hepburn
Hepburn was the type of person who didn’t let setbacks stop her from achieving her goals, actively pursuing what she wanted and believed in. What can we in turn learn from her?
”Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” - Audrey Hepburn
It’s never too late to start learning.
To roll with the punches that life throws at you.
Most importantly, beyond all else – it’s your attitude that counts above all else, in regards to anything that you wish to achieve in this life.
There are many difficult aspects to learning a language. My opinion has always been that it’s best to ignore them. The road to fluency can seem long when you first look at it, but if you approach it with the right attitude, you will be able to take that first step and continue confidently along your way.
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Polyglot Who Invented New Languages
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, author of many novels including the Lord of the Rings trilogy was not only fluent in many languages – he invented them.
A scholar at heart, it was Tolkien’s mother who introduced him to languages, teaching him Latin, French and German in his youth. Over the course of his education, he learned many other languages such as Middle English, Finnish (which he reportedly taught himself), Old Norse, Spanish and Welsh. Languages he was familiar with included Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and Russian.
[caption id="attachment_17581" align="aligncenter" width="650"]
The One Ring from Lord of the Rings is engraved in Elvish, a language invented by J. R. R. Tolkien.[/caption]As if that wasn’t impressive enough, this early knowledge gave him the grounding he needed to create his own languages, such as Quenya and Sindarin (the Elvish languages, his most developed), Dwarvish, Entish and Black speech. Quenya, the High Elvish tongue is reported to have be inspired by Finnish.
“Elen sill ûmenn’ omentielvo” – “A star shines on the hour of our meeting.” - Lord of the Rings
Tolkien learned languages, simply because he loved and respected them.
”No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.” - J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘English and Welsh’, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
From Tolkien, we can learn that the biggest level of success in learning languages, comes quite simply, from a desire to learn. That being, that when you approach language learning, you are doing it for the right reasons.
Language learning should never be about bragging rights. Instead, you should have a solid motivation for wanting to learn either another, or multiple languages.
Why is this important?
Simply, because language learning takes time and commitment. You are going to have days when you feel lazy and unmotivated. Sometimes it may seem like an impossible task. Often, you’ll feel like you’re too busy to dedicate the time needed to achieve the level of fluency that you’ve set yourself.
As Tolkien suggests, if you can look back to that one core reason for learning a language – whether that be an interest in the culture of a particular country, or a love for languages themselves – then that motivation that you need on those odd days where you’d rather procrastinate will never be that far out of reach.
Eddie Izzard: “I don’t find languages easy, but I have a hunger to learn”
Eddie Izzard is an English stand-up comedian, actor and writer. He has long been an advocate for the importance of language learning.
[caption id="attachment_17582" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
Eddie Izzard was the first stand-up comedian to perform in multiple languages.[/caption]To highlight this point, in 2013 he performed his show Force Majeure in four different languages – Arabic, German, Spanish and French. He also spoke in Russian and Italian during the international tour.
He is interestingly, the first stand-up comedian to perform in multiple languages. And for good reason, as he noted the difficulty in touring foreign countries, performing in English and expecting his jokes to transcend language and cultural barriers.
“You could do certain big cities but you wouldn't really get through. I want to be there, getting through.” – Eddie Izzard
Izzard doesn’t claim fluency in each of these languages. He measures himself on percentages and would only claim to be “65% fluent in French and 30% fluent in German”. However, it is his attitude towards learning languages that has led to his inclusion on this list.
“If I get stuck with a word or a phrase during a show I ask the audience, "How do you say such and such", and they help out. I don't find languages easy but I have a hunger to learn.” - Eddie Izzard
Izzard hits the nail on the head. You don’t have to be some kind of genius to learn languages. You just have to be willing to get in there, make mistakes, have a laugh and above all, be doing it for the right reasons.
History Never Repeats - Or Does It?!
Although each of these people throughout history took about learning languages for very different reasons, they all have one thing in common.
They recognised the need and value in learning to communicate, no matter what the circumstances of their language acquisition.
Is there a polyglot from history that you find inspiring? Who was it and for what reasons? Let me know in the comments!
Image credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
The post The Language Secrets of Prolific Language Learners appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}