Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

by Gabriel Wyner

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. —Nelson Mandela

I encountered three basic keys to language learning: 1. Learn pronunciation first. 2. Don’t translate. 3. Use spaced repetition systems.

The first key, learn pronunciation first, came out of my music conservatory training (and is widely used by the military and the missionaries of the Mormon church). Singers learn the pronunciation of languages first because we need to sing in these languages long before we have the time to learn them.

You’ll have to determine for yourself whether your image of fluency includes political discussions with friends, attending poetry readings, working as a secret agent, or lecturing on quantum physics at the Sorbonne.

There’s no coincidence here; we learn better when we’re having fun, and in looking for the fastest ways to learn, I naturally ended up with the most enjoyable methods.

I intend to teach you how to learn, rather than what to learn.

Choose a language based upon employment opportunities, difficulty, availability of resources, or number of speakers, but in the end, choose a language that you like.

Never settle for safe when you can have fun instead. Your language will become a constant companion, living in your head. If you like your language, then you’ll have fun studying it, and when you have fun, you learn faster.

Qualsiasi dato diventa importante se è connesso a un altro. Any fact becomes important when it’s connected to another. —Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

structure, sound, concept, and personal connection. These are the four levels of processing.

We recall images much better than words, because we automatically think conceptually when we see an image. Image-recall studies have repeatedly demonstrated that our visual memory is phenomenal.

For an abstract word like economía (economy), our job is still very simple. When we search Google Images, we’ll find thousands of pictures of money, piggy banks, stock market charts, and politicians. By choosing any of these images, we’ll force ourselves to think concretely and conceptually. As a result, the word will become much easier to remember. If we ask ourselves whether the economía has affected our lives, we’ll get the personal connection we need to remember that word forever.

Your brain is a sophisticated filter, which makes irrelevant information forgettable and meaningful information memorable. Foreign words tend to fall into the “forgettable” category, because they sound odd, they don’t seem particularly meaningful, and they don’t have any connection to your own life experiences. • You can get around this filter and make foreign words memorable by doing three things: • Learn the sound system of your language • Bind those sounds to images • Bind those images to your past experiences

When you study by reading through a list multiple times, you’re practicing reading, not recall. If you want to get better at recalling something, you should practice recalling it.

Our blank sheet of paper, which could be replaced by a stack of flash cards, a multiple choice test, or simply trying to remember to yourself, is precisely the type of practice we need. It improves our ability to recall by tapping into one of the most fascinating facets of our minds—the interplay of memory and emotion.