10 ms·

Rules for Learning Foreign Languages in Record Time

174 points by xvirk 13y ago

triberian 13y ago
Real life hacker, always a pleasure to read. Go on Tim!
JetSpiegel 13y ago
By the end of the post this starts to look like a spy handbook.
SeanLuke 13y ago
I speak three languages, more or less. Much of what this guy says is either obvious or wrong. There's not much in-between. The big irritant is his absurd claims about adult learning capabilities. When I was in my teens, I learned Cantonese as a native English speaker. In my 40s, I learned Italian. Cantonese -- an extremely difficult language for English speakers -- was far easier to learn. In truth I think there is one overriding rule to successfully learning a foreign language. No matter how many classes you take or Rosetta Stone CDs you buy, will never really learn a language unless you are forced to speak it ALL THE TIME. If you want to learn German, move to Germany. When foreign PhD students come to the US, I tell them that if they want to be effective researchers in computer science, they must know English well. And step one for doing that, as PhD students in the US, is to get roommates who do not speak their native language.
- brickcap 13y ago
  I think you are absolutely right about "being forced to speak it" part but moving to a different country may not always be a practical solution. Some people, myself included, learn foreign language for fun and moving to a different country would just make it an expensive hobby. One thing I have discovered is there are fun ways to learn a new language even if you are on your own. I am learning french and I love watching movies so every now I then I watch a french movie first with subtitles and then without. Most of the times I miss the words but I am getting familiar with sounds and every time I pick up french for dummies I get more confident. But you are right. One must spend time with the language one is learning.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  The big irritant is his absurd claims about adult learning capabilities. When I... You = personal experience of one. Him = personal experience of one + research + more research + claims he's looked for counter studies Benny 1 - Sean 0
  - hackerboos 13y ago
    I'd like to see this research. Does he have a paper published?
    - icebraining 13y ago
      It's not his research, he just mentions it: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013648 http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...
  - gbog 13y ago
    I don't know, nowadays it seems that if you look hard enough you can find published papers demonstrating any point, and it seems even easier to find paper "proving" something against common sense and experience. Here it is the case: My Chinese wife is a perfect French speaker but she still can't hear or pronounce the difference between "gato" and "cado". I work in Chinese, in a 100% immersion, and tones are still not natural to me. And our bi-cultural kid, at 3, has better tones than me, and has no problem with d and t, or g and k. I won't look hard for papers but I would be surprised if none has ever "proven" that babies hear and execute the full palette of sounds, and learning a language specializes (by narrowing) this skill, removing parts not used in the context to differenciate meanings.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      >if you look hard enough you can find published papers demonstrating any point Don't be willing to make an argument against all science while trying to win one discussion. Just give your anecdote and let people take it as they will.
    - troydj 13y ago
- baldfat 13y ago
  I think you are right on with my take on the article. I can read multiple of dead languages BUT I can never speak any other language but English. I can read (non-modern) Hebrew, Classical/Konie Greek, Aramaic, Latin and somewhat (not dead) German. Thank you Theology Studies the Nerds great subject to learning language and history. I now work with 250 students in Head Start (3-5 years old) and about 20% speak mainly Spanish and I can speak to any 5 or 6 year old in Spanish fairly well, but adults I sound like a 5 year old. I try to talk with the staff where 50% speak fluent Spanish and well they always go back to English and I never progress. :(
  - laichzeit0 13y ago
    It gets worse. I'm bilingual since childhood. I mostly speak English. People can very obviously tell that the second language is not my native tongue. This is after 30 years of using it. It comes down to how much of your day is spent conversing in a language, I'd guess that if it's less than 20% it's a dead giveaway. Speaking to adults is completely different than speaking to children. The Pareto principle he cites is actually deceiving. Yes learning 20% of the vocab gives you 80% of the commonly used words. Now try and go to 90%. If I remember you have to double effort. So e.g. if 80% is 1500 words, 90% is 3000, 95% is 6000, 97% is 12000, etc. It's diminishing returns. The problem is to have adults conversations all the time you probably need a vocabulary of around 6000 words, depending on the context of the conversation. Ever hear what a foreigner sounds like when they speak broken English or English with a strong accent? That's exactly what you sound like when you're talking to someone else in their language. Like some complete retard. Mess up one single thing or say something unidiomatic and the show's over. If they feel their English is better they'll switch immediately, but just keep going and hopefully they'll switch back.
    - yread 13y ago
      And even after you've mastered 10s of thousands of words (you can estimate it for english here http://testyourvocab.com/ http://testyourvocab.com/ ) you're still going to be struggling with cultural references to children's shows which were popular 30 years ago or politics from 5 years ago.
- mrfusion 13y ago
  I agree about the idea of being forced to speak it. I think a cool idea would be some kind of RPG or MMORGP where you are forced to speak the language you are learning to accomplish tasks in the game.
  - bernatfp 13y ago
    Incidentally, I have a friend who learned English as a third language exactly this way, playing WoW. He obtained the CAE this way.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    Perhaps if you want to learn profanities? I've been on a few foreign language servers with text-based messaging (Enemy Territory) and all requests for help with slang terms has always met with attempts to deceive me: Me: "slt, ksk c'est 'putain de merde' svp?" Pierre: "In English that means 'airstrike'" TLM: "MDR" ... or something along those lines.
    - antimagic 13y ago
      I'm loving the mixture of sms speak and vouvoying...
      - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
        Should I tutoyer when I'm being made fun of by strangers in the chatbox of an FPS. Language is so complex. Actually it's probably because we drop "s'il vous plait" in to speech in our family (or sometimes asante sana or danke schon) so I'd think of that first before parsing it as a vous form. Good spotting.
- Mvandenbergh 13y ago
  I've never even seen any claims that there is a significant difference in language learning ability between teenagers and adults. There is strong evidence that very young children (younger than three years) can pick up the phonetic aspects of languages in a way that adults simply can't and people often simplify that to "young children are better at languages". Given that this guy's key message seems to be about the importance of actually using the language (over taking classes or reading textbooks) I'm not sure that you actually disagree with him.
- caio1982 13y ago
  Slightly offtopic: I live in a city in Brazil whose heritage is basically german so I know a lot of people trying to learn german here. A particular friend of mine used to work for an IT german company and went to Germany a couple of times and he said every time he tried to speak their language they'd frown at him or feel like "conversation's not flowing" and switch to english. Other friends living in Germany (Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin) and also in Switzerland (Zurich) said the same happens to them with some frequency. I never heard about it happening with other languages or in other countries, so why is that? Any germans out there care to comment on this? Edit: just to make it clear, this is purely out of linguistic curiosity
  - islon 13y ago
    I think this was his personal experience, or maybe his german level is too basic to be useful. I’m a brazilian living in Germany and people here are very open and forgiving about your german even if you are still learning and make a lot of mistakes, they really like their language and prefer it over english if it’s possible, at least that’s my experience.
  - levosmetalo 13y ago
    Depends on who you are, and how good they know you. Germany is a country that historically had a lot of low skilled poorly educated immigrants working in professions that require almost no skills. Those people never really integrated (not always their fault). When unknown person approach a German with broken/half-broken/non-perfect German skills, that German has immidiate prejudice about your social status and education level. If your friend is from Brasil, I guess skin colour also plays a role here. Happened to me numerous times. You will get much better treatment speaking English, since that level the playing fields and then they consider you as an equal. Also happened to me numerous times. So yes, the only way to actually speak German in Germany and not be intimidated is to speak it with people that you already knows and you can consider friends.
  - kjs3 13y ago
    > I never heard about it happening with other languages or in other countries Same thing happened to me all the time in Japan (to be fair, my Japanese is essentially non-existent except for a handful of phrases) and France (significantly more proficient, but still not a proficient speaker). The Japanese in particular seemed put off by butchering their language.
- melling 13y ago
  Long time HN reader here. I've got several iOS language apps in the App Store. Here's my Spanish app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?m... I'd appreciate it if a few people could download it and provide feedback. The store is getting quite crowded so I'm looking for ideas to find a niche. I've got versions for several other languages, which I outsourced the translations. At this point, I'm not sure where to make further investment.
  - mason55 13y ago
    Good offline mode is the biggest thing missing from the current apps IMO. DuoLingo's was mediocre but on the latest update they completely broke it. Memrise lets you download a lesson but most of the mnemonics, which are the big draw, don't actually download, so it loses a lot of its functionality and just turns into flashcards. I do most of my studying on my commutes which are all on the subways.
    - melling 13y ago
      My apps don't require an online mode. I'd like to use iCloud sync at some point so you can move between devices and keep your favorites, scores, etc.
- fidotron 13y ago
  I think it's simpler than that: something about the Latin languages makes them unusually hard to pick up for fluent English speakers. This strikes me as one of the main reasons Latin stayed being taught in the English speaking world for so long. Once you've got one the rest seem to follow, but that first one seems to be brutal. Compare that with the Asian languages, and I know more people that claim to have picked up substantial bits of Japanese through importing videogames than is remotely reasonable, and have had a sort of light experience of it myself. The very alienness of it prevents attempts to link it back to your previous context, when constantly trying to do so is, in my experience, a perpetual tarpit.
dschiptsov 13y ago
If we define "learning foreign language" as an ability to read classic texts without dictionary or skipping words and being able to watch classic movies or TV without subtitles.. Well, it took me almost 10 years, but now I could read, say, Feynman's lectures without stumbling. In a world of punks being able to say "hi, how are you, how much for this" in several languages is called "polyglot".)
- V-2 13y ago
  I once heard a definition that you are not really competent in a foreign language until you're able to solve crosswords in it. This principle is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but there's much truth to it in my opinion.
  - gbog 13y ago
    But... crosswords in Chinese? How'd you do that?
  - irishpolyglot 13y ago
    I can't do crosswords in English, my native language. I definitely can't breeze through classical texts. It's important to be realistic on the other end of the scale too. Criteria like this are way too demanding, and it's one of the biggest problems in language learning that makes people feel worthless; having elitist standards that you "don't" speak a language unless you speak it like a university professor, regardless of the fact that you may not speak your mother tongue that way.
    - V-2 13y ago
      Well there's different types of crosswords. I guess they mean the ones that focus on the language itself (eg. idiomatic stuff) and not requiring some obscure knowledge
  - antimagic 13y ago
    I personally like using the ability to understand stand-up comedy as the gold standard of fluency. I've lived 10 years in France now, and I was already capable of doing a job interview in French on arrival, until recently I only had French friends, only watched films / tv in French, read books in French 90% of the time, and I still struggle with comedy. Part of it is that they speak so fast, part of it is cultural references which I don't have, but a lot of it is that nuance is a major part of the comedian's trade, and I'm more or less nuance tone deaf, even after all these years of effort.
aussie_mate 13y ago
this guy is a fake. i am polish and i can guarantee that there is no way in the world that one can speak the way he spoke in the video in just 1 hour of learning. polish is very hard to learn (ask my wife, she's an Aussie and after 10 years she still cannot pronounce my name/surname correctly). great PR stunt but hardly believable. i speak 5 languages but it took me 20 years to learn them (excluding polish) and it's not a walk in the park......definitely not 3 months......just ask any linguist or foreign language teacher. it's just like saying that you can read a programming book or watch a video tutorial and get a job hacking for google or facebook. what a load of bullshit! btw, i work as a programmer and used to work as a teacher
- merrua 13y ago
  Thats possible, but some people do learn languages a lot faster than other. Kato Lomb for example. That guy is also a polygloth, so I'm sure he would learn faster than I would (or another random person).
  - aussie_mate 13y ago
    it's true that some people learn faster then others and that some people can understand notions and ideas that no one else can (at last not as quickly) but there is no way in hell.....i repeat NO WAY IN HELL that one can have a conversation in polish after studying the language for 1 hour (regardless of how bad their pronunciation or choice of vocabulary is). take it from a polish native who is also a polyglot. i guess some people like to believe scams like these and would be quite happy to also accept the fact that you can become a millionaire in 3 months if you only follow my technique etc. or you can learn how to advance your stock market analysis skills if you only try hard enough/have a knack for it/follow me blindly etc. put it that way......if it's so easy, how come nearly every school in the world offers some sort of foreign language curriculum yet after years of studying the given language 99.9% of students will not remember anything past counting to 10 and 'how r u'-type phrases? seeing is believing but not in this case. good luck learning.....i suggest starting with polish :)
    - 13y ago
bigd 13y ago
I believe few of the points he made were remarkable: the intonation/accent is definitely true. Walk like an egyptian, is really true, full immersion too. I also believe 3 months are a reasonable time for a B2 when those points are granted. Then I admire, and envy, that he has time enough to go around the world and learn new languages for the sake of it.
- loumf 13y ago
  He made it his job. He sells polyglot e-books and courses.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
V-2 13y ago
I live in Poland. There's a lot of Mormon missionaries coming here, mostly Americans (but not exclusively). I have to say that I am very impressed by their command of Polish. As far as I know, they only attend a 3 months course prior to leaving their home country. And they're really fluent. Motivation?
- Mvandenbergh 13y ago
  Motivation, sure. Full time focus during those three months. A lot of people will say that they've studied a language for a certain number of months or years but how many hours have they put in over that time? I think the biggest thing is that you're likely seeing them after a few weeks in country, remember that these guys have to get out and do their pitch for 8+ hours a day, every day. So their command of basic greetings, introductions, and specialised religious and other context appropriate vocabulary would be expected to get better very quickly.
- jaimebuelta 13y ago
  The single most important concept of learning a language is personal motivation. I always thought that without that needing a language (because you live in a country where you need to use it, because your girl/boyfriend speaks it, because you want to read some books/watch movies and are only available on a different language) is extremely difficult to get it. If you think that learning a language would be cool, or it will make a good job opportunity... that strong need is not that present, and everything is way more difficult..
  - yread 13y ago
    Excellent point! Learning French in France or Spanish in Spain is easier than learning Dutch in Netherlands because everybody speaks at least OK English, there is just no need to learn Dutch. Getting a little desperate and lonely helps a great deal to picking up a language faster
- futurist 13y ago
  Gift of tongues. 1 Cor 14:1-40 KJV
seangp 13y ago
I wish more people saw this guy for the snake oil salesman he really is (edit: Ferriss that is).
- mhartl 13y ago
  I think Ferriss's beloved 80/20 rule applies to Ferriss himself: 80% of the value comes from 20% of his material. There is, to be sure, a lot of hyperbole, but once you filter out the dross what's left is gold.
mholt 13y ago
1-2 years? Not bad. FWIW, Mormon missionaries learn their languages in 6-12 weeks, then are fluent after about a year in their field. I wonder how they do that.
seanccox 13y ago
Can we change the headline to reflect the content: "12 Rules for Learning Enough of a Foreign Language to Moderately Communicate and Possibly Comprehend in Written or Spoken Form in Record Time"
koshak 13y ago
All languages divide into groups. It's always easier to learn foreign language of your group. For example if you are an English speaker, you can start with German. Then look at Dutch. They have more or less same grammar rules. After that if you've had enough zeal and curiosity, you can probably understand main rules of forming words, split unknown words into lexical units and morphemes. That said you can move to the next level - French, Italian and Spanish. Italian and Spanish can be learnt simultaniously. It's hard, but as the languages have a lot in common, it will be interesting. My native language is Russian. I can understand and speak Ukranian, Belorussian, Chech, Serbian. Just because they have a lot in common. And vice versa. But not always... Well the only rule to succeed as already mentioned is to dive into language. People who move to other countries usually learn to speak foreign language within several months. But as far as we live in Internet you can learn whatever you want without actually moving. Every day we read thousands of sentences and 10s thousands of words. You can read the same in the language you want to learn. Facebook, twitter, google, newsfeeds, search for the information you want in the language you want to know and read articles. The more you read the more you learn and soon you'll be able to form your phrases. As soon as you can form phrases and understand what you read without searching every word in dictionary, you're ready to dive into grammar. Learn grammar as fast as possible now. That's the hardest and the most exhausting part of my method, but it is obligatory. Learn rules, draw tables with tenses, declension rules and so on. Find grammar exercises and do them all. Thus you train your brain to form phrases the right way, to spell the right way. Next part is fun part - pronunciation. It's fun because in real life you sometimes can't understand your neighbour, and dialects divide your country to sort of "language provinces". In russian language there's no English sound "th". It transformed to 'f'(Theodor - Федор) and 't' (thriller - триллер). So placing tongue between teeth is a hard but funny part for newbies. It's also funny to learn to pronounce 'r' in German, English and French. You will learn a lot about your tongue and jaw. Last part is a "separate thread" part because learning new words is a constant process. Sometimes it's also a funny part. For example in chech the word hallway(chodba) is pronounced exactly like russian word ходьба (walking) and german 'Herr' (Mr.) is pronounced like russian 'penis', so "Herr Ivanov, sitzen Sie bitte" sounds funny. And spanish 'huesos' (bones) is the transliteration of 'хуесос' (dicksucker). Apart from that there are a lot of words common for all european languages. That's what I do. It's a slow and silent method for learning foreign language on your own. It's like progressive jpeg. The harder you work the better the result. But every next language is learnt faster than previous.
Mvandenbergh 13y ago
I'm not a huge fan of the sales-talky, motivational speaker tone that Benny uses. [Also what I don't like about Tim Ferris]. That being said, I think the basic message of, "the way to learn a new language is to speak it as much as humanly possible", is important enough that it deserves to be repeated despite it being pretty obvious. I spent eight months studying French for a few hours every Saturday morning in a class and a few hours a week doing homework, I felt like I was making good progress in the class but without actually being able to usefully speak French. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had a language learning experience like this. The thing is - I could (kind of) use two past tenses and one future tense while still stumbling over basic introductions and asking for directions. This doesn't make any sense from a utility point of view. So I hired a succession of French teachers on Skype to have the same basic conversations with - the kind of basic transactional or quick introduction "speed dating" type conversations that I'd actually be likely to have with native speakers on a frequent basis. Surprise, surprise, my French abilities got better by leaps and bounds. It cost less than I was paying for the classes as well. I now think that organised group classes are a waste of money for adult learners. I can find native language French teachers that do classes on Skype for less than £10 / hour, which is about the price of group classes with 6-10 people in them. Spending an hour which is 45 mins me talking and 15 minutes of corrections has done more for my spoken French than an hour of group classes where I actually have maybe 5 minutes cumulatively to speak. Yeah, sometimes it is a little boring spending an hour having conversations about hotel bookings and flight reservations, but I can actually do those things pretty confidently after practicing them for two hours.
- sudont 13y ago
  Where did you find the people online? I've looked at http://www.italki.com/ http://www.italki.com/, but not much else.
  - Mvandenbergh 13y ago
    I mostly use italki, a lot of teachers advertise on gumtree in the UK for face-to-face lessons and will also do Skype lessons.
kennon 13y ago
Good tips but the 3-month claims create unrealistic expectations. It likely results in higher book sales but means most people will give up before they actually become fluent in a foreign language. Fluency, also, is difficult to define. I listened to a couple minutes of Benny stammering his way through a Mandarin language interview. His level seems on par for 3 months of study, so perhaps he equates basic communication as "fluency." If I can talk to a stranger on the bus for 10 minutes, does that mean I'm fluent? Not according to most language rating scales, though they are admittedly very subjective. The Foreign Service Institute of the US State Dept sorts foreign languages into three groups, based upon how long it takes a typical student to reach professional competency (CEFR C1, IFL 3/3+): http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang... Professional competency means: can you perform office functions in that language? Most non-Latin languages take a year of dedicated study (1000 hrs) to reach fluency. Exceptionally difficult languages, such as Arabic or Mandarin, take 2 years. Also, it's debatable whether even the 3/3+ moniker equates to fluency. I scored a 3+ in Russian and there are many, many situations that I cannot navigate in that language. So could you, for instance, learn Arabic to a C1 level within 3 months? It's highly doubtful and shame on the author for giving people that impression.
tokenadult 13y ago
Benny's American accent in Chinese is thick (the tones are often wrong on individual words), and his speech is halting, but even with the mistakes in grammar and vocabulary choice, I can understand him. (I am an American native speaker of English who has been learning Chinese as a second language since I was a teenager in the 1970s. My HN user profile discloses other languages I have studied over the years.) So, yeah, I guess he's doing not half badly. You won't fail to notice that Benny speaks MUCH more slowly than the native speaker of Chinese he "interviews," and after the prepared remarks he uses to open up the interview, and a few personal stories about himself, he hardly interacts with the native speaker of Chinese except to say "uh-huh." (You will also not fail to notice that the Chinese woman he is interviewing knows English, and presumably has spoken Chinese to other Americans with thick accents before.) I think the rule of language learning in the blog post that has the most plausibility is "#8 – Embrace mistakes." (The interview subject basically says this to Benny in the interview, that he has a good habit of immediately using the language he learns, which he learns to use, and uses bravely.) I know an American man whose first visit to east Asia was simply to use up a one-way portion of an airplane ticket a friend gave him. He arrived in Taiwan in 1982 not knowing a word of Chinese, and having a thick south Boston (specifically Quincy, I think) accent that made his English sound strange to most Americans who met him. But he was very bold in striking up conversations with local people in Taiwan, and practiced his Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) relentlessly, so he gradually outpaced a lot of more shy Americans in his actual communication proficiency. He eventually found work in a high-tech company operated mostly by Hong Kong Chinese people, and has had a very satisfying career working both in east Asia and on the west coast of the United States. I was DELIGHTED to remake acquaintance with him by LinkedIn a few years ago and to endorse his language ability. He earned it. Of course Benny is promoting his new book, and here is a link to some press coverage generated by his publicity efforts: http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/13/benny-lewis-the-man-who-says-you-can-learn-a-language-in-three-months-4545062/ http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/13/benny-lewis-the-man-who-says-y... Perhaps the statement in the article, "Lewis says: ‘The problem here, though, is that if you have such high criteria for fluency, then I have to confess, I’m not even fluent in English, my native language’" helps put his claims in context.
- irishpolyglot 13y ago
  "Benny's American accent in Chinese is thick" I'm Irish.
hrktb 13y ago
As many 'X rules for Y' posts, the fundamental skills are not discussed. People who already became somewhat fluent in a foreign language during childhood and have a work or hobby keeping them learning new things everyday won't need half of these 'rules'. Learning basic vocabulary and grammar will be enough as a starter to speak with people, read/watch things and progress very fast organicly, without any 'tricks'. I had friends learning Korean in 6 months by going straight through the alphabet and grammar system and then exclusively watching tv dramas and wikis and online forums;but they also learned japanese and english and german and can code in 4 computer languages at any time. Someone who never cared about foreign language until 30, had very conservative jobs and hobbies when it came to learning new concepts (am I describing a solid third of the population of most countries) will have a very hard time to first relearn to learn, and develop the mind scafolding to handle multiple languages and systems, and the best approach to learning won't be the same at all.
personlurking 13y ago
I've met Ben (which doesn't say much since many people have met him), read his blog posts from time to time and seen his TedX talk [1]. Being fluent in a language that isn't mine, near-fluent in another language and intermediate in yet another, I could never buy his idea of "just speak it without needing to know anything yet." If it were plausible, many people would not be monolingual. Plus, any claims of fluency in less than one year, in-country, I also don't buy...not true fluency, anyways. Other than that, I've got nothing against him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZqUeWshwMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZqUeWshwMs
dagurp 13y ago
I feel like he's focusing too much on the speaking part and too little on listening. I can make myself understandable in Danish, German and Spanish but it is impossible for me to follow a conversation in any of them.
dagurp 13y ago
I feel like he's focusing too much on the speaking part and too little on listening. I can make myself understandable in Danish, German and Spanish but it is impossible for me to follow a conversation in any of them.

174 points by xvirk 13y ago

triberian 13y ago

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

JetSpiegel 13y ago

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

SeanLuke 13y ago

I speak three languages, more or less. Much of what this guy says is either obvious or wrong. There's not much in-between. The big irritant is his absurd claims about adult learning capabilities. When I was in my teens, I learned Cantonese as a native English speaker. In my 40s, I learned Italian. Cantonese -- an extremely difficult language for English speakers -- was far easier to learn. In truth I think there is one overriding rule to successfully learning a foreign language. No matter how many classes you take or Rosetta Stone CDs you buy, will never really learn a language unless you are forced to speak it ALL THE TIME. If you want to learn German, move to Germany. When foreign PhD students come to the US, I tell them that if they want to be effective researchers in computer science, they must know English well. And step one for doing that, as PhD students in the US, is to get roommates who do not speak their native language.

brickcap 13y ago
I think you are absolutely right about "being forced to speak it" part but moving to a different country may not always be a practical solution. Some people, myself included, learn foreign language for fun and moving to a different country would just make it an expensive hobby. One thing I have discovered is there are fun ways to learn a new language even if you are on your own. I am learning french and I love watching movies so every now I then I watch a french movie first with subtitles and then without. Most of the times I miss the words but I am getting familiar with sounds and every time I pick up french for dummies I get more confident. But you are right. One must spend time with the language one is learning.
mattmanser 13y ago
The big irritant is his absurd claims about adult learning capabilities. When I... You = personal experience of one. Him = personal experience of one + research + more research + claims he's looked for counter studies Benny 1 - Sean 0
- hackerboos 13y ago
  I'd like to see this research. Does he have a paper published?
  - icebraining 13y ago
    It's not his research, he just mentions it: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013648 http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...
- gbog 13y ago
  I don't know, nowadays it seems that if you look hard enough you can find published papers demonstrating any point, and it seems even easier to find paper "proving" something against common sense and experience. Here it is the case: My Chinese wife is a perfect French speaker but she still can't hear or pronounce the difference between "gato" and "cado". I work in Chinese, in a 100% immersion, and tones are still not natural to me. And our bi-cultural kid, at 3, has better tones than me, and has no problem with d and t, or g and k. I won't look hard for papers but I would be surprised if none has ever "proven" that babies hear and execute the full palette of sounds, and learning a language specializes (by narrowing) this skill, removing parts not used in the context to differenciate meanings.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    >if you look hard enough you can find published papers demonstrating any point Don't be willing to make an argument against all science while trying to win one discussion. Just give your anecdote and let people take it as they will.
  - troydj 13y ago
baldfat 13y ago
I think you are right on with my take on the article. I can read multiple of dead languages BUT I can never speak any other language but English. I can read (non-modern) Hebrew, Classical/Konie Greek, Aramaic, Latin and somewhat (not dead) German. Thank you Theology Studies the Nerds great subject to learning language and history. I now work with 250 students in Head Start (3-5 years old) and about 20% speak mainly Spanish and I can speak to any 5 or 6 year old in Spanish fairly well, but adults I sound like a 5 year old. I try to talk with the staff where 50% speak fluent Spanish and well they always go back to English and I never progress. :(
- laichzeit0 13y ago
  It gets worse. I'm bilingual since childhood. I mostly speak English. People can very obviously tell that the second language is not my native tongue. This is after 30 years of using it. It comes down to how much of your day is spent conversing in a language, I'd guess that if it's less than 20% it's a dead giveaway. Speaking to adults is completely different than speaking to children. The Pareto principle he cites is actually deceiving. Yes learning 20% of the vocab gives you 80% of the commonly used words. Now try and go to 90%. If I remember you have to double effort. So e.g. if 80% is 1500 words, 90% is 3000, 95% is 6000, 97% is 12000, etc. It's diminishing returns. The problem is to have adults conversations all the time you probably need a vocabulary of around 6000 words, depending on the context of the conversation. Ever hear what a foreigner sounds like when they speak broken English or English with a strong accent? That's exactly what you sound like when you're talking to someone else in their language. Like some complete retard. Mess up one single thing or say something unidiomatic and the show's over. If they feel their English is better they'll switch immediately, but just keep going and hopefully they'll switch back.
  - yread 13y ago
    And even after you've mastered 10s of thousands of words (you can estimate it for english here http://testyourvocab.com/ http://testyourvocab.com/ ) you're still going to be struggling with cultural references to children's shows which were popular 30 years ago or politics from 5 years ago.
mrfusion 13y ago
I agree about the idea of being forced to speak it. I think a cool idea would be some kind of RPG or MMORGP where you are forced to speak the language you are learning to accomplish tasks in the game.
- bernatfp 13y ago
  Incidentally, I have a friend who learned English as a third language exactly this way, playing WoW. He obtained the CAE this way.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Perhaps if you want to learn profanities? I've been on a few foreign language servers with text-based messaging (Enemy Territory) and all requests for help with slang terms has always met with attempts to deceive me: Me: "slt, ksk c'est 'putain de merde' svp?" Pierre: "In English that means 'airstrike'" TLM: "MDR" ... or something along those lines.
  - antimagic 13y ago
    I'm loving the mixture of sms speak and vouvoying...
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      Should I tutoyer when I'm being made fun of by strangers in the chatbox of an FPS. Language is so complex. Actually it's probably because we drop "s'il vous plait" in to speech in our family (or sometimes asante sana or danke schon) so I'd think of that first before parsing it as a vous form. Good spotting.
Mvandenbergh 13y ago
I've never even seen any claims that there is a significant difference in language learning ability between teenagers and adults. There is strong evidence that very young children (younger than three years) can pick up the phonetic aspects of languages in a way that adults simply can't and people often simplify that to "young children are better at languages". Given that this guy's key message seems to be about the importance of actually using the language (over taking classes or reading textbooks) I'm not sure that you actually disagree with him.
caio1982 13y ago
Slightly offtopic: I live in a city in Brazil whose heritage is basically german so I know a lot of people trying to learn german here. A particular friend of mine used to work for an IT german company and went to Germany a couple of times and he said every time he tried to speak their language they'd frown at him or feel like "conversation's not flowing" and switch to english. Other friends living in Germany (Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin) and also in Switzerland (Zurich) said the same happens to them with some frequency. I never heard about it happening with other languages or in other countries, so why is that? Any germans out there care to comment on this? Edit: just to make it clear, this is purely out of linguistic curiosity
- islon 13y ago
  I think this was his personal experience, or maybe his german level is too basic to be useful. I’m a brazilian living in Germany and people here are very open and forgiving about your german even if you are still learning and make a lot of mistakes, they really like their language and prefer it over english if it’s possible, at least that’s my experience.
- levosmetalo 13y ago
  Depends on who you are, and how good they know you. Germany is a country that historically had a lot of low skilled poorly educated immigrants working in professions that require almost no skills. Those people never really integrated (not always their fault). When unknown person approach a German with broken/half-broken/non-perfect German skills, that German has immidiate prejudice about your social status and education level. If your friend is from Brasil, I guess skin colour also plays a role here. Happened to me numerous times. You will get much better treatment speaking English, since that level the playing fields and then they consider you as an equal. Also happened to me numerous times. So yes, the only way to actually speak German in Germany and not be intimidated is to speak it with people that you already knows and you can consider friends.
- kjs3 13y ago
  > I never heard about it happening with other languages or in other countries Same thing happened to me all the time in Japan (to be fair, my Japanese is essentially non-existent except for a handful of phrases) and France (significantly more proficient, but still not a proficient speaker). The Japanese in particular seemed put off by butchering their language.
melling 13y ago
Long time HN reader here. I've got several iOS language apps in the App Store. Here's my Spanish app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?m... I'd appreciate it if a few people could download it and provide feedback. The store is getting quite crowded so I'm looking for ideas to find a niche. I've got versions for several other languages, which I outsourced the translations. At this point, I'm not sure where to make further investment.
- mason55 13y ago
  Good offline mode is the biggest thing missing from the current apps IMO. DuoLingo's was mediocre but on the latest update they completely broke it. Memrise lets you download a lesson but most of the mnemonics, which are the big draw, don't actually download, so it loses a lot of its functionality and just turns into flashcards. I do most of my studying on my commutes which are all on the subways.
  - melling 13y ago
    My apps don't require an online mode. I'd like to use iCloud sync at some point so you can move between devices and keep your favorites, scores, etc.
fidotron 13y ago
I think it's simpler than that: something about the Latin languages makes them unusually hard to pick up for fluent English speakers. This strikes me as one of the main reasons Latin stayed being taught in the English speaking world for so long. Once you've got one the rest seem to follow, but that first one seems to be brutal. Compare that with the Asian languages, and I know more people that claim to have picked up substantial bits of Japanese through importing videogames than is remotely reasonable, and have had a sort of light experience of it myself. The very alienness of it prevents attempts to link it back to your previous context, when constantly trying to do so is, in my experience, a perpetual tarpit.

dschiptsov 13y ago

If we define "learning foreign language" as an ability to read classic texts without dictionary or skipping words and being able to watch classic movies or TV without subtitles.. Well, it took me almost 10 years, but now I could read, say, Feynman's lectures without stumbling. In a world of punks being able to say "hi, how are you, how much for this" in several languages is called "polyglot".)

V-2 13y ago
I once heard a definition that you are not really competent in a foreign language until you're able to solve crosswords in it. This principle is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but there's much truth to it in my opinion.
- gbog 13y ago
  But... crosswords in Chinese? How'd you do that?
- irishpolyglot 13y ago
  I can't do crosswords in English, my native language. I definitely can't breeze through classical texts. It's important to be realistic on the other end of the scale too. Criteria like this are way too demanding, and it's one of the biggest problems in language learning that makes people feel worthless; having elitist standards that you "don't" speak a language unless you speak it like a university professor, regardless of the fact that you may not speak your mother tongue that way.
  - V-2 13y ago
    Well there's different types of crosswords. I guess they mean the ones that focus on the language itself (eg. idiomatic stuff) and not requiring some obscure knowledge
- antimagic 13y ago
  I personally like using the ability to understand stand-up comedy as the gold standard of fluency. I've lived 10 years in France now, and I was already capable of doing a job interview in French on arrival, until recently I only had French friends, only watched films / tv in French, read books in French 90% of the time, and I still struggle with comedy. Part of it is that they speak so fast, part of it is cultural references which I don't have, but a lot of it is that nuance is a major part of the comedian's trade, and I'm more or less nuance tone deaf, even after all these years of effort.

aussie_mate 13y ago

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

merrua 13y ago
Thats possible, but some people do learn languages a lot faster than other. Kato Lomb for example. That guy is also a polygloth, so I'm sure he would learn faster than I would (or another random person).
- aussie_mate 13y ago
  it's true that some people learn faster then others and that some people can understand notions and ideas that no one else can (at last not as quickly) but there is no way in hell.....i repeat NO WAY IN HELL that one can have a conversation in polish after studying the language for 1 hour (regardless of how bad their pronunciation or choice of vocabulary is). take it from a polish native who is also a polyglot. i guess some people like to believe scams like these and would be quite happy to also accept the fact that you can become a millionaire in 3 months if you only follow my technique etc. or you can learn how to advance your stock market analysis skills if you only try hard enough/have a knack for it/follow me blindly etc. put it that way......if it's so easy, how come nearly every school in the world offers some sort of foreign language curriculum yet after years of studying the given language 99.9% of students will not remember anything past counting to 10 and 'how r u'-type phrases? seeing is believing but not in this case. good luck learning.....i suggest starting with polish :)
  - 13y ago

bigd 13y ago

I believe few of the points he made were remarkable: the intonation/accent is definitely true. Walk like an egyptian, is really true, full immersion too. I also believe 3 months are a reasonable time for a B2 when those points are granted. Then I admire, and envy, that he has time enough to go around the world and learn new languages for the sake of it.

loumf 13y ago
He made it his job. He sells polyglot e-books and courses.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

V-2 13y ago

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

Mvandenbergh 13y ago
Motivation, sure. Full time focus during those three months. A lot of people will say that they've studied a language for a certain number of months or years but how many hours have they put in over that time? I think the biggest thing is that you're likely seeing them after a few weeks in country, remember that these guys have to get out and do their pitch for 8+ hours a day, every day. So their command of basic greetings, introductions, and specialised religious and other context appropriate vocabulary would be expected to get better very quickly.
jaimebuelta 13y ago
The single most important concept of learning a language is personal motivation. I always thought that without that needing a language (because you live in a country where you need to use it, because your girl/boyfriend speaks it, because you want to read some books/watch movies and are only available on a different language) is extremely difficult to get it. If you think that learning a language would be cool, or it will make a good job opportunity... that strong need is not that present, and everything is way more difficult..
- yread 13y ago
  Excellent point! Learning French in France or Spanish in Spain is easier than learning Dutch in Netherlands because everybody speaks at least OK English, there is just no need to learn Dutch. Getting a little desperate and lonely helps a great deal to picking up a language faster
futurist 13y ago
Gift of tongues. 1 Cor 14:1-40 KJV

seangp 13y ago

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

mhartl 13y ago
I think Ferriss's beloved 80/20 rule applies to Ferriss himself: 80% of the value comes from 20% of his material. There is, to be sure, a lot of hyperbole, but once you filter out the dross what's left is gold.

mholt 13y ago

1-2 years? Not bad. FWIW, Mormon missionaries learn their languages in 6-12 weeks, then are fluent after about a year in their field. I wonder how they do that.

seanccox 13y ago

Can we change the headline to reflect the content: "12 Rules for Learning Enough of a Foreign Language to Moderately Communicate and Possibly Comprehend in Written or Spoken Form in Record Time"

koshak 13y ago

All languages divide into groups. It's always easier to learn foreign language of your group. For example if you are an English speaker, you can start with German. Then look at Dutch. They have more or less same grammar rules. After that if you've had enough zeal and curiosity, you can probably understand main rules of forming words, split unknown words into lexical units and morphemes. That said you can move to the next level - French, Italian and Spanish. Italian and Spanish can be learnt simultaniously. It's hard, but as the languages have a lot in common, it will be interesting. My native language is Russian. I can understand and speak Ukranian, Belorussian, Chech, Serbian. Just because they have a lot in common. And vice versa. But not always... Well the only rule to succeed as already mentioned is to dive into language. People who move to other countries usually learn to speak foreign language within several months. But as far as we live in Internet you can learn whatever you want without actually moving. Every day we read thousands of sentences and 10s thousands of words. You can read the same in the language you want to learn. Facebook, twitter, google, newsfeeds, search for the information you want in the language you want to know and read articles. The more you read the more you learn and soon you'll be able to form your phrases. As soon as you can form phrases and understand what you read without searching every word in dictionary, you're ready to dive into grammar. Learn grammar as fast as possible now. That's the hardest and the most exhausting part of my method, but it is obligatory. Learn rules, draw tables with tenses, declension rules and so on. Find grammar exercises and do them all. Thus you train your brain to form phrases the right way, to spell the right way. Next part is fun part - pronunciation. It's fun because in real life you sometimes can't understand your neighbour, and dialects divide your country to sort of "language provinces". In russian language there's no English sound "th". It transformed to 'f'(Theodor - Федор) and 't' (thriller - триллер). So placing tongue between teeth is a hard but funny part for newbies. It's also funny to learn to pronounce 'r' in German, English and French. You will learn a lot about your tongue and jaw. Last part is a "separate thread" part because learning new words is a constant process. Sometimes it's also a funny part. For example in chech the word hallway(chodba) is pronounced exactly like russian word ходьба (walking) and german 'Herr' (Mr.) is pronounced like russian 'penis', so "Herr Ivanov, sitzen Sie bitte" sounds funny. And spanish 'huesos' (bones) is the transliteration of 'хуесос' (dicksucker). Apart from that there are a lot of words common for all european languages. That's what I do. It's a slow and silent method for learning foreign language on your own. It's like progressive jpeg. The harder you work the better the result. But every next language is learnt faster than previous.

Mvandenbergh 13y ago

I'm not a huge fan of the sales-talky, motivational speaker tone that Benny uses. [Also what I don't like about Tim Ferris]. That being said, I think the basic message of, "the way to learn a new language is to speak it as much as humanly possible", is important enough that it deserves to be repeated despite it being pretty obvious. I spent eight months studying French for a few hours every Saturday morning in a class and a few hours a week doing homework, I felt like I was making good progress in the class but without actually being able to usefully speak French. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had a language learning experience like this. The thing is - I could (kind of) use two past tenses and one future tense while still stumbling over basic introductions and asking for directions. This doesn't make any sense from a utility point of view. So I hired a succession of French teachers on Skype to have the same basic conversations with - the kind of basic transactional or quick introduction "speed dating" type conversations that I'd actually be likely to have with native speakers on a frequent basis. Surprise, surprise, my French abilities got better by leaps and bounds. It cost less than I was paying for the classes as well. I now think that organised group classes are a waste of money for adult learners. I can find native language French teachers that do classes on Skype for less than £10 / hour, which is about the price of group classes with 6-10 people in them. Spending an hour which is 45 mins me talking and 15 minutes of corrections has done more for my spoken French than an hour of group classes where I actually have maybe 5 minutes cumulatively to speak. Yeah, sometimes it is a little boring spending an hour having conversations about hotel bookings and flight reservations, but I can actually do those things pretty confidently after practicing them for two hours.

sudont 13y ago
Where did you find the people online? I've looked at http://www.italki.com/ http://www.italki.com/, but not much else.
- Mvandenbergh 13y ago
  I mostly use italki, a lot of teachers advertise on gumtree in the UK for face-to-face lessons and will also do Skype lessons.

kennon 13y ago

Good tips but the 3-month claims create unrealistic expectations. It likely results in higher book sales but means most people will give up before they actually become fluent in a foreign language. Fluency, also, is difficult to define. I listened to a couple minutes of Benny stammering his way through a Mandarin language interview. His level seems on par for 3 months of study, so perhaps he equates basic communication as "fluency." If I can talk to a stranger on the bus for 10 minutes, does that mean I'm fluent? Not according to most language rating scales, though they are admittedly very subjective. The Foreign Service Institute of the US State Dept sorts foreign languages into three groups, based upon how long it takes a typical student to reach professional competency (CEFR C1, IFL 3/3+): http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang... Professional competency means: can you perform office functions in that language? Most non-Latin languages take a year of dedicated study (1000 hrs) to reach fluency. Exceptionally difficult languages, such as Arabic or Mandarin, take 2 years. Also, it's debatable whether even the 3/3+ moniker equates to fluency. I scored a 3+ in Russian and there are many, many situations that I cannot navigate in that language. So could you, for instance, learn Arabic to a C1 level within 3 months? It's highly doubtful and shame on the author for giving people that impression.

tokenadult 13y ago

Benny's American accent in Chinese is thick (the tones are often wrong on individual words), and his speech is halting, but even with the mistakes in grammar and vocabulary choice, I can understand him. (I am an American native speaker of English who has been learning Chinese as a second language since I was a teenager in the 1970s. My HN user profile discloses other languages I have studied over the years.) So, yeah, I guess he's doing not half badly. You won't fail to notice that Benny speaks MUCH more slowly than the native speaker of Chinese he "interviews," and after the prepared remarks he uses to open up the interview, and a few personal stories about himself, he hardly interacts with the native speaker of Chinese except to say "uh-huh." (You will also not fail to notice that the Chinese woman he is interviewing knows English, and presumably has spoken Chinese to other Americans with thick accents before.) I think the rule of language learning in the blog post that has the most plausibility is "#8 – Embrace mistakes." (The interview subject basically says this to Benny in the interview, that he has a good habit of immediately using the language he learns, which he learns to use, and uses bravely.) I know an American man whose first visit to east Asia was simply to use up a one-way portion of an airplane ticket a friend gave him. He arrived in Taiwan in 1982 not knowing a word of Chinese, and having a thick south Boston (specifically Quincy, I think) accent that made his English sound strange to most Americans who met him. But he was very bold in striking up conversations with local people in Taiwan, and practiced his Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) relentlessly, so he gradually outpaced a lot of more shy Americans in his actual communication proficiency. He eventually found work in a high-tech company operated mostly by Hong Kong Chinese people, and has had a very satisfying career working both in east Asia and on the west coast of the United States. I was DELIGHTED to remake acquaintance with him by LinkedIn a few years ago and to endorse his language ability. He earned it. Of course Benny is promoting his new book, and here is a link to some press coverage generated by his publicity efforts: http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/13/benny-lewis-the-man-who-says-you-can-learn-a-language-in-three-months-4545062/ http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/13/benny-lewis-the-man-who-says-y... Perhaps the statement in the article, "Lewis says: ‘The problem here, though, is that if you have such high criteria for fluency, then I have to confess, I’m not even fluent in English, my native language’" helps put his claims in context.

irishpolyglot 13y ago
"Benny's American accent in Chinese is thick" I'm Irish.

hrktb 13y ago

As many 'X rules for Y' posts, the fundamental skills are not discussed. People who already became somewhat fluent in a foreign language during childhood and have a work or hobby keeping them learning new things everyday won't need half of these 'rules'. Learning basic vocabulary and grammar will be enough as a starter to speak with people, read/watch things and progress very fast organicly, without any 'tricks'. I had friends learning Korean in 6 months by going straight through the alphabet and grammar system and then exclusively watching tv dramas and wikis and online forums;but they also learned japanese and english and german and can code in 4 computer languages at any time. Someone who never cared about foreign language until 30, had very conservative jobs and hobbies when it came to learning new concepts (am I describing a solid third of the population of most countries) will have a very hard time to first relearn to learn, and develop the mind scafolding to handle multiple languages and systems, and the best approach to learning won't be the same at all.

personlurking 13y ago

I've met Ben (which doesn't say much since many people have met him), read his blog posts from time to time and seen his TedX talk [1]. Being fluent in a language that isn't mine, near-fluent in another language and intermediate in yet another, I could never buy his idea of "just speak it without needing to know anything yet." If it were plausible, many people would not be monolingual. Plus, any claims of fluency in less than one year, in-country, I also don't buy...not true fluency, anyways. Other than that, I've got nothing against him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZqUeWshwMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZqUeWshwMs

dagurp 13y ago

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

dagurp 13y ago