The late and great Steve Jobs was famous for many things, and was arguably one of the most influential contributors to how advanced personal use technology developed over the last few decades. But another thing that he was quite well known for, which definitely contributed a huge amount to how much he achieved, was his reality distortion field (RDF).

Rather than the mystical powers the name (and my silly photo) suggests, this is simply charm, persistence, boldness and, most importantly, a refusal to give up, which leads to great things being achieved that the average person won’t, since they simply don’t try hard enough.

It’s “distorting” reality, very simply because one “reality” is what people think about you failing, and another is what you think and do, to make sure you succeed. You have to ignore the naysayers, even if some of what they say may be true (i.e. a “reality”), but actually totally irrelevant to you and your situation (e.g. maybe some unhelpful studies show that kids are better learners, but others show that adults are), and focus only on what will bring you in the right direction.

I don’t actually think Steve Jobs was unique in having one. It’s something that could be argued (depending on how you define it) that everyone applies in one way or another. The difference is that some people have configured their RDF to work for them (or to help other people), while the majority of us have ours set to self-sabotage mode. Those who have achieved great things despite setbacks have had a way of living and a mentality that made these things much more likely.

In my mind a RDF is synonymous with a lifestyle and mentality that hacks luck, filters for success, ignores any “signs” from the universe that you should stop, is filled with passion, and helps you to surround yourself with people who will help you achieve that goal.

This is not about the law of attraction; a cheesily marketed and questionably explained technique to “think” yourself to greatness. The point is that a positive mentality combined with a LOT of hard work is what’s really required here. No bogus explanations about quantum psychic energy are required to understand why the following suggestions, with video illustrations, simply work:

1. Don’t let anybody tell you what you can’t do

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEGSiX0JA-s

Will Smith explains it best here. [And I like the fact that there are Taiwanese flags in the background ]

I don’t care if you have 9 university diplomas, or have an IQ of 200; if you are telling me that I can’t do something, then you are wasting my time, and I will ignore you. Some people take “being realistic” too far, and are obsessed with protecting people from getting disappointed. A life without trying is way more disappointing if you have a dream you never even truly pushed yourself to achieve.

2. Shoot for the moon

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-5_8af3TiY

Before a big fight, Muhammad Ali would intimidate his opponents with powerful (and ridiculous) words like “I’ve handcuffed lightening, and thrown thunder in jail! Only last week, I murdered a rock!”

Way too many people aim very very low in life. Modest objectives and modest promises will yield modest results. I don’t just aim for fluency in 3 months, I start my day M.Ali style and tell myself “Today I’ll out-talk an auction host, say the word that’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue before they know it themselves, and give a discourse so great they’ll elect me president before lunch!”

When you start the day with that up-beat attitude and work hard to go in that direction, then doing something like ordering food you’ve never had before in a language you just started to learn, seems way more achievable.

Today, I started my day with that silly mantra above to myself, and this upbeat attitude made me put my doubts and second-guessing aside. I ordered a breakfast that I never had before, in somewhere new and in a language I’ve been learning for only 3 weeks. And and for the first time, it felt natural – no pausing, no struggling, no misunderstanding. The language was just flowing – both the words I was saying and my understanding of everything being said to me. It isn’t the same as having a deep conversation with someone, but aiming high has got me this far already, so I have no intentions of watering down my objectives.

A “realistic” mindset where you are constantly reminding yourself of your limitations, instead of your potential, can never bring you this far. Be unrealistic.

3. When the going gets tough, remember the struggles of those before you

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wRkzCW5qI

While this short video is quite cheesy (in a clever, very well synched way), all of these movies (some of them based on true stories, and some of them just Hollywood silliness) remind me that if I bitch and whine about a little thing like a language being too hard, then that’s nothing.

Others before me have had to fight wars, racism, starvation, poverty, and the most resilient among them have, against all odds, and sometimes for many years, somehow managed come out on top. How can you give up when those with obstacles way more immense than yours have charged forward?

Almost every problem you face can be overcome if you keep things in perspective like this. Giving up on something small and manageable is pure insanity!

4. When you fall, get back up again

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOlTdkYXuzE

Yes, the more you try, the more you will fail.

Failing isn’t what matters; it’s how you finish. Keep trying again and again: the last time will be the one that counts the most, since you will either give up, or you’ll succeed. Finish strong.

5. Be a round peg in a square hole

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX9GTUMh490

Challenge the status quo and see things differently. Yes, perhaps most people would fail if they attempt what you want to achieve. But you aren’t most people. Limiting yourself by the status quo is for sheep. Be different.

Effective people are not problem minded, they are opportunity minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. Ineffective people do the opposite.

6. Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK2XvOs8e1s

While it’s likely many of you would have seen this speech over the last months, this short part at the end is my favourite bit, since it encapsulates the essence of an efficient RDF to me. Keep trying, keep enjoying, take risks, aim high, and never give up. One “reality” is that you could fail, but do absolutely everything in your power to make sure that the alternative happens.

In attempting to learn to speak fluent Mandarin in just 3 months, I’m taking lots of risks, getting discouragement from dozens of people (online, never in person) every day, feeling lonely since I don’t know anyone within thousands of miles yet since I’m intentionally avoiding those I can communicate with easiest, working so hard to stay outside of my comfort zone that it feels like my brain is going to melt most of the day, putting my ego aside while I feel like a complete idiot every time I open my mouth…

And I’m hungry for more.

What will determine my success is not the materials I use, the teacher I have, the ratio of input vs output or other technical details. It’s entirely determined by how much I am devoted to the reality of me succeeding, and in making that happen. My RDF is very well configured, and is likely to lead to success because of this. Failure is always an option, but I don’t care about that because trying hard is always an option too.

When someone tells me again that what I’m aiming for is impossible, I don’t think twice about ignoring them. The people who gave or who inspired the speeches in these videos didn’t concern themselves with what was “impossible”, and if it’s not breaking any laws of physics then neither do I. If someone gives me some useful advice, I take it to heart. If I have a minor victory then I enjoy the moment and make sure another one happens very soon. If I have a failure, I learn from it and try again.

And I can feel the goal creeping closer. Every step forward is like a mountain in itself that I struggle to climb due to the immensity of what I’m trying to do, but I’m not giving up any time soon.

The advice in these videos are more important to language learners than anything else I can think of.

Yes, I’ll give technical updates of what I’m using and tricks relevant to what’s unique to Chinese, but a glass is half full mindset, and an absolute certainty that it is far from the hardest language in the world – these mentalities so quickly dismissed by cynics as barely relevant, are what will truly decide if I succeed in this or not.

So, is your RDF properly configured? Let me know in the comments!
Similar Posts:

• How to achieve the impossible
• Your worst enemy on the path to success? You!
• Perfectionist paralysis
• Fake it ’till you make it
• Stop being such a crybaby

----------------------------
6 short videos to help you configure your very own reality distortion field is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Photo taken using my camera's auto-timer of course...

Whether or not I feel lonely in travelling by myself for such a long time is one of the biggest questions I get asked when people hear about my lifestyle of over eight years of solo travel, and something I’ll tell you all about today. What you read may surprise you!

“Isn’t travelling alone… lonely?” I get this question several times a week, both in person and via email.

I find it very interesting and curious, because the question itself is loaded with presumptions and bias.

To show you what I mean, picture this:

The non-travel lonely lifestyle

For four years I studied Electronic Engineering in UCD (Dublin) – one of the country’s most demanding courses, with full time classes (9am-6pm, Mon-Fri), some evening courses, labs, homework, incredible amounts of studying for very complex course material (including quantum physics and very advanced applied Mathematics) and a looming sixteen examinations at the end of the year, where if you fail just one of those many examinations, you have to repeat the entire year!

Because of this it had the highest failure rate of any course at the university, and many people would simply not make it through to the next year. With my drive though, I didn’t just want to pass, but to get a first class honours to ensure better opportunities later in life.

The pressures of this course meant that I poured my whole life into it, and barely had any social life in college, and definitely no girlfriend or even time to “play around”. I got up, went to class, came home, studied and did assignments, watched TV by myself to relax and then all weekend long gave private Mathematics lessons to schoolkids to help me fund the expenses of living in Dublin.

I went out to parties about six times a year. Not quite the fun college lifestyle I was seeing on my TV shows.

It doesn’t take a big stretch of the imagination to realize that this was a very lonely lifestyle. And yet how many times over the four years do you think people asked me “Are you lonely as an electronic engineering student?”

Zero.

The thing is, many lifestyles are lonely. A single mother who has to work two jobs, people who are settled away from their home town for work purposes who find it hard to make new friends, unhappy introverts, and thousands of other types of people stuck in situations and routines they see no way out of. And yet nobody ever asks them how lonely they are. I am very sure that so many people reading this post feel the same way.

It has always struck me as unfair that travellers (who do this by choice) are the privileged few to be asked this question, when so many other people who have no choice on the matter would need to share their frustrations much more than us.

And the ironic thing about it all? I’m way less lonely now and way happier about my life than I ever was as a “settled” student in Dublin.

What is lonely?

The thing about the question is that it has really leaves a lot to be defined. Lonely compared to what? Compared to before I started travelling? Compared to you? Compared to locals where I am? Compared to a “typical” single guy my age? Compared to a a married guy with children and an active social life?

The thing is, there are many aspects of loneliness. You can be lonely even if surrounded by people who know you because you feel they don’t “get” you, you can be lonely in a long-term relationship because you realise it isn’t going great, you can be lonely because you are stuck in a routine and not having deep conversations with people etc.

It just seems so obvious to many people that I must feel lonely as a solo traveller, since I don’t have the same person physically constantly there with me. But to me loneliness depends way more on the person’s mindset than on their situation.

By getting over the shy delusion, and maintaining some personality when I meet new people, I can make new friends very quickly, generally no matter where I am. Some places have been tougher to do this, but with persistence I always make one or several true friends.

“But you can’t make a true friend in just a few months!!” Of course, I disagree. Like learning a language, you can either take many many years to piece together aspects of a relationship, or you can do it intensively and get to know someone quicker and open yourself up to them at a much deeper level, even in a short time.

In Ireland we say “A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet”. I keep this philosophy on the road, and don’t restrict my definition of friend to the sadly restrictive one of someone who I have known since childhood. No matter where you are on the road, if you are open to making a new friend – either with other travellers like yourself, or (more ideally) with those from the location you are visiting – you will never feel alone.

The need to have someone there

As well as this, there are certain people who definitely need company more than others. Despite many crazy posts on this blog implying that I’m a 24-hour party animal, I actually spend most of my time on my computer by myself.

And I’m quite happy with this. Some people may desperately need people there all the time (so-called “extroverts”) and some are quite happy by themselves, reading a book, surfing the net, or working on some interesting project.

Even when I’m on my computer, I’m not actually alone. I video Skype my parents every week and feel like I’m back home with the camera in the living room and the fact that I can show them around my place. I chat to great friends of mine from all around the world to see how they are doing via Facebook. To some this “virtual” connection may seem meaningless or superficial, but to me it’s the next best thing to actually being there with someone.

If I’ve had a rough day, I can tell someone about it. Even if I’m in a country where not a single person knows my name, I can always open myself up thanks to the level of connectivity of the 21st century.

So thanks to the Internet and anybody I know being just a phonecall away, I am never truly alone. And that’s forgetting the fantastic local friends I am making that I can open myself up to.

The loneliness and friendships that comes from hurried travel

This year has been a bit different compared to my normal 3-month stays. I decided at the start of the year that I’d have many intensive language and cultural immersion missions, which has ultimately totalled learning six languages. It’s been fun, but next year I will be back to mostly three month stays (starting in January by learning a language I’m not even vaguely familiar with from scratch to fluency, more appropriate to the blog title).

One reason that I’m looking forward to returning to my slower pace is that this year has been more stressful than most because of the lack of deeper relationships due to a quicker pace of travel and other obstacles. I only spent a month in Puerto Galera for example, and adjusted to the local culture slower than usual, so I didn’t make any local life-long friends sadly. I was in Amsterdam and Istanbul for two months each, but I found the Dutch to be very reluctant to make friends with me when I was honest about leaving so soon, and I was ill for most of my stay in Turkey so I wasn’t out much with the very friendly Turks.

Even so, despite these setbacks I made some real friends in these two places that I will stay in touch with for life. It’s harder, but it’s always possible. Even after a measly five days in Cali, I managed to make some incredibly deep friendships and enter into aspects of the locals’ lives that I feel few visitors ever will. Even in short stays you can make friends that count.

As well as this, as the world gets smaller, you start to bump into more and more people as your paths cross again and again. For example, I’ve met Gary Arndt, Matt Kepnes, Rob “Bloggeries”, Scott Young, Jodi Ettenberg, Karol Gajda and actually dozens of others numerous times in various cities, countries, and continents. Not really intentionally, just that our paths happen to cross frequently from common interests. As fellow travellers, I find it very easy to pick up where I left off with each of them, especially since we understand the life of a vagabond (or vagablogger…) and can relate to one another in that way.

Even here in Peru I’ve been hanging out with Dave, my friend from Medellín.

The world is smaller than you think

In Couchsurfing, we have a saying that “The world is smaller than you think”, and I genuinely believe this. You can feel like a little spec alone in the vast lonely universe, or you can accept that we have so many things in common with one another, and that this brings us all closer together.

Perhaps I won’t be meeting someone who I click with perfectly around every corner, but the diversity is what makes this all the more interesting; especially when you see all the things you do actually share with someone despite thousands of kilometres of separation your whole life and a very different culture and upbringing.

Rather than focus on all the reasons why I could feel lonely, I like to look at it with a more “glass is half full” perspective . Loneliness is a state of mind, not a state of latitude and longitude . I simply refuse to think myself into loneliness, the same way I refuse to whine about how hard everything is. Such negative thoughts are self fulfilling prophecies.

The fact that I travel solo encourages me all the more to meet new people, to get outside of my comfort zone, and of course to learn much more about the local language and culture. The “mission” aspect of my travels and the work I do on this site gives me lots to focus on, whereas if I was just a rich kid bouncing around with no purpose, then I’d probably have plenty of time to think myself into loneliness.

I’m very grateful for my current lifestyle. I know I won’t be travelling forever – when I feel like I’ve had enough, I can always decide to settle down and become a long-term part of a community. Until then, such loneliness questions are not something that I ever have on my mind, other than to assure people asking the question that I’m doing quite OK

Of course, the aspect of finding love on the road and how that can contribute to feeling a deep connection and avoiding loneliness is a very different kettle of fish, which I’ll come back to in another post to give it the detail it deserves!

Hopefully this post helps put the first two biggest questions in perspective! Thanks as always for reading along and share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
Similar Posts:

• Frequently asked questions for a long term traveller
• Solo travel hacking: How to make new friends using a stethoscope and 200 ear plugs
• 29 life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight
• Easy lifestyle adjustments to get a huge boost when things are going slowly
• Is it better to travel to villages for language/cultural immersion?

----------------------------
Is long-term solo travel… lonely? is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

There are thousands of ways to learn a language; Pimsleur, LingQ, Livemocha, Rosetta Stone, lots of studying, silently absorbing (click the links to see why I don’t fully recommend learning these ways). There is also SRS, image association, singing along to your favourite songs, and lots of other things that I do recommend.

You can argue with me or disagree with me about these preferences. That’s fine. Any method may ultimately bring you in the right direction.

But there is one thing that must be made clear: If your goal is to speak then none of the above matters at all if you don’t follow the golden rule – the number one “method” that I want to make clear in this shorter-than-usual post (especially since the blog has a lot of new readers in the last weeks).

Are you ready?

The ONLY way to speak a language is to OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SAY SOMETHING.

I’m not joking or playing word games here. I’m serious.

Stop telling everyone how you’re too old, that you don’t have time, that you aren’t naturally talented, you aren’t “ready” yet because you don’t have any words or comfortable conversation fillers, or that you are too shy.

The only way you will speak a language and make progress in speaking it faster and better is if you practise speaking it a lot. Maybe speaking isn’t your priority – that’s fine, but if it is say something. Now.

All auxiliary tasks can help move you in the right direction, but will not ultimately help you speak unless you find a native, put yourself in front of them and force yourself to start to communicate. Try your best, make mistakes, and enjoy actually using your language with a human being.

It’s the only “method” that is guaranteed to produce results.

Before you start thinking too much about why it’s impossible, go out and give it a try. It won’t be perfect, but you will have spoken the language. With lots of practice, soon you will be doing it much more confidently.

So stop focusing so much on learning a language!!! Open your mouth and say something! Let me know what happens in the comments below
Similar Posts:

• Why it doesn’t matter whose or what method you follow
• Speak! Or stop pretending you want to
• Fake it ’till you make it
• The ONE thing that will ultimately lead to success
• Ask WHY first (not how/what): the most important issue ignored in language learning

----------------------------
The ONLY way to speak a language is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Now that I’m about a month into my Turkish mission I can say that things are going slower than expected. I’m behind on where I would normally be at this stage in learning a language.

This has nothing to do with any issues with the language itself; Turkish is actually one of the most logical and interesting languages I’ve learned in a while, and I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the language at the end of the mission as always.

It also has nothing to do with culture clashes – people have been very friendly and encouraging for my entire time here, and even though I’m far from satisfied with my level, people are constantly complimenting me on what I am saying.

The problem has been lack of energy, sparked off by the sleeping problems I’ve had since I arrived and still not been able to completely recover from, mostly because I generally wake up with sunlight, not alarm clocks, and this apartment gets almost no natural light.

By sleeping in so late (and usually too much), when I get up it’s too hot out to go for a jog, so I haven’t been getting enough exercise while here. (Living in this very central part of the city has meant that nearby gyms and other clubs are quite expensive)

As well as this, I’ve been indulging a bit too much in various desserts (“Turkish delight” ring any bells?) and this unhealthy eating is also sucking up my energy; the most frustrating part is that it has a vicious circle effect of building on itself and making it harder to break the chain the next day.

While I was reflecting about the last eight years and what I’ve learned about life in general, I’ve also had a chance to think about actual missions and projects I’ve had; some successful and some less successful.

With all other things being equal, I can see with great consistency that my successes have been very integrally tied to my lifestyle at the time. I sincerely believe that learning a language (as well as so many other projects) can be very easy if you do it right. This doesn’t mean just picking the right learning materials and practising a lot, but also having a healthy lifestyle in general so that your energy and enthusiasm levels are consistently high.

With this in mind, I’ve been thinking about things that have been issues I’ve had that have brought me and other people to plateaus that cease progress in projects, which are entirely lifestyle related.

As I ask myself these questions, maybe you should ask yourself too if you are having similar lack-of-energy issues that may be caused by one or several:

• Are you eating a healthy balanced diet, with as little processed, fatty and sugary foods as possible? Are you making sure you don’t skip any meals?
• Are you getting enough exercise? Doing something active, like going for a brisk walk every day and doing something more demanding like jogging, dancing or playing sports several times a week?
• Are you getting a good night’s sleep? “Good” doesn’t mean as much as possible. By having a power nap in the afternoon, I can get by great on just five hours sleep per day as long as I get up early.
• Are you getting enough water and avoiding drugs that damage your system when consumed too much (or even a little) like alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and less-main-stream ones? (Not a problem I personally have)
• Are you dealing with stress well, by taking time-outs from work, doing yoga, trying to focus on the positive rather than clouding your mind with bad thoughts and trying to eliminate sources of stress (arguing etc.) whenever possible?
• Are you getting enough breaks from computer and other screens and spending them with friends and family? Hours in front of the TV, or even wasted doing pointless things online or playing games can leave you feeling like you’ve achieved nothing important at the end of the day. Time with human beings in non-formal and non-stressful ways always enriches our lives more.
• Are you adding structure to your day to prevent you from wasting time? While in Colombia, for example, I shared some tricks I use to force myself to use my time more efficiently.

The way I see it, if you aren’t enthusiastically jumping out of bed first thing in the morning, and feel like today you have achieved at least one important thing at the end of the day, then you have to re-examine what is going on in your life.

Many people think it’s all down to external factors (and they obviously matter a lot), but I really think that things that you have 100% control over contribute much more in many cases, especially what you put into your body, how you use your free time and if you exercise. I’m answering ‘no’ to several of these questions now, and that’s why I’m low on energy (and even enthusiasm). I remember living similarly at other times when my projects haven’t gone so well.

But during most of my travels, I’m glad to say that I would answer yes to these questions and this is a major reason why I can get a lot of things done that I do. Luck has nothing to do with it. Energy and enthusiasm are the fuel that makes so much of it possible for me and many other people. This energy can be created and maintained by treating your body and mind well.

External factors and sources of stress can get you started into treating your body and mind poorly. In my case it’s a combination of sleep issues and some frustrations from my travel style that are a bit more apparent at times. While people think that not having children and being free to move country regularly mean that I have zero stress, there are other particular issues with this lifestyle that I haven’t discussed yet (which settled people have to deal with much less or never), but that generally don’t pose me problems when I have the energy to shrug them off and work around them.

But rather than just stay in a lull forever, it’s important to examine it, understand it, think logically and get out of it. And, of course, to do your best to make sure you don’t get back in. For example, my sleeping problems (which has been the catalyst leading to my frustrating recent weeks) persist mainly from the very minor initially overlooked detail of my apartment not getting enough light. Now I know that even a fantastic location and great price should be second to a well-lit apartment in future. I miss my morning sun and look forward to getting it back

Since I generally have mostly good habits, it won’t be so hard to get back into them as long as I try hard. If you haven’t had some particular good habits consistently before and would like to get into them, then the approach I’d most highly recommend is the 30-day per habit forming strategy, as it is by far the most effective long-term one that sticks.

So, hopefully in my next weeks while I eat healthier and get more exercise, I’ll also be making significant strides in my project, and still plan to make a video at the end in the language as always

If you have had similar issues, and found that lifestyle adjustments helped to get over them, make sure to share it with us in the comments below!
Similar Posts:

• How to learn a language in hours, not years
• Ask WHY first (not how/what): the most important issue ignored in language learning
• Do you need to be rich to travel the world?
• Unleash your confidence
• Is long-term solo travel… lonely?

----------------------------
Easy lifestyle adjustments to get a huge boost when things are going slowly is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Eight years.

That’s 416 weeks, or almost 3,000 days.

This is the amount of time that I have not had a fixed home; moving to a new country, culture and language every few months and taking absolutely everything I own with me. It has been a significant percentage of my life, and it’s still long from over.

I had actually done some travelling before – a couple of summers in the states, and an entire month already in Spain. But about this time back in 2003, on the week of my 21st birthday, I left Ireland for good. I had graduated university a few days before, and knew that I’d only be coming back “home” for visits (I’ve never once missed the family Christmas dinner). But it’s not really my home any more. Since then, “wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home”.

After devoting my life to them, university and schools had taught me nothing of any real importance. I had gone through as many books as I could and thought I knew it all, but the fact of the matter is that I have become the person I was meant to be in the last 4/5 of a decade, while on the road. And I certainly still have a lot left to learn.

[Edit: People keep asking me how I can afford a travel lifestyle for so long, or if I'm rich or if my parents paid for everything. I paid for the entire trip myself, starting with no money saved up; I can assure you my lifestyle is way cheaper than most settled people who prove observation #10 and need so much money to buy rubbish!

You don't need to be rich to travel the world. To find out more about me and my story, please read my site's About page to see a list of the many jobs I've had during my travels. For just the last one year I've been earning money by helping people to hack languages quicker. I've also followed this post up with some FAQs about long-term travel here, regarding finding work and the psychological aspect of it.]

Since yesterday was my 29th birthday and this week is my 8 year “travelversary”, I thought it fitting to share 29 of these revelations with you of things that I have learned on this journey. Many of them are about life in general, but these are actually my observations after meeting many people from all over the world:

1. Everyone everywhere basically wants the same thing

Vastly different as the world’s cultures are, if you speak to Italian millionaires, homeless Brazilians, Dutch fishermen and Filipino computer programmers, in their own languages, you start to see that we are all incredibly alike where it matters.

Everyone just wants validation, love, security, enjoyment and hopes for a better future. The way they verbalise this and work towards it is where things branch off, but we all have the same basic desires. You can relate to everyone in the world if you look past the superficial things that separate you.

2. Deferring your happiness to the future is a terrible idea

Too many people presume that when they have that one thing they can work towards for years then “everything will be alright”.

This is delusional.

When you get it, there’ll be something else missing in your life. I fundamentally believe that long-term pure happiness from one particular situation or achievement is a pipe-dream, but we can learn to be content with what we have, live in the now, all while enjoying the progress and changes we are making.

If your whole life is working up towards one really big major goal that you hold on to for years, then you will have a major anticlimax after the dust settles. Work towards it, but stop deferring your happiness.

Get there slower and enjoy the ride. I like how it is portrayed in this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4

Enjoy the show, and don’t wait for the finale. A song I really like (in Spanish) reminds me that the present really is all we have.

3. “Someday my ship will come in” is bullshit. You will NEVER win the lottery. Be practical.

People seem to have a strange concept of how luck works and how the universe/some deity/karma/their lucky shoe or how “they deserve it” will mean that things will eventually fall into place for them. You are “due” to win the lottery or will get swept away by prince charming any day now. “You deserve it” (as if others don’t).

This is a misunderstanding of how the world actually works. Perhaps I’m wrong and praying or hoping that it will all work out, or generally being a nice person is what really “does the trick”, but why not actually get off your ass and do something tangible too while you’re at it.

I personally don’t believe in magic or fairies or astrology or sky wizards or large-scale invisible inexplicable forces at work on petty daily activities of humans. I’m sceptical about such things, and believe they are all impossible/ridiculous, and knowledge of this has enriched my life. As a practical person, I see the world as a very logical place with physical and social rules and understanding this has helped me live well in it.

The universe owes you nothing, you owe it to yourself to be the master of where your life ends up.

4. There’s no such thing as destiny. This is excellent news!

Destiny is used as a cop-out and standard excuse by most people for why they don’t do something with their lives. The thing is, it doesn’t exist.

Your limitations are not set by who you know, where you were born, what genes you have, how much money you have, how old you are right now, what you did before or other things that you can claim are your stamp of failure for life.

If you are determined enough there is a shitload of opportunities in life that are totally achievable with minimal cash, regardless of who you are.

5. Seek out people with different beliefs and views of the world to yours and get to know their side of the story

As you can probably guess from #3, I have some beliefs about the world that don’t jive with a lot of people’s. However, a lot of people get their meaning in life from believing in things I don’t. If everyone thought like me, the world would be a very boring place.

So when I meet someone with a very different belief system to mine, it’s better to get along than to try to “convert” them. This is as true for how the world works as it is for language learning methods, fashion, movie tastes etc.

When someone is sure about something and has believed it for many many years, then you cannot convince them with a few cleverly picked words. Everyone is closed minded about something, including me. They have to discover it themselves over time or just continue believing what they do. Don’t take responsibility for convincing the world you are right. It’s important to acknowledge that maybe you are actually the wrong one.

The world is much more fun with people of varying interests and beliefs. Despite my scepticism, in my travels I have hung out with astrologists, palm readers, very religious folk, conservatives, and people who hate technology. And my life and experiences are enriched so much because of it.

Spending time exclusively with people who agree with you on everything would never challenge you and allow you to learn so much more.

6. Living a good life is the best way possible to convince people

Enough words and enough arguing. Just live by example and soon you’ll have people on your side when they see your results and how passionate you are. No need to “convince” them. Just show them that you are there, tell them how you got there, and they will start to realise that maybe you aren’t that crazy after all.

7. Nobody has it all figured out

Almost everyone has problems and puts on a brave face – don’t presume they have it easy. You see of each person what they let you see. You have no idea what they are going through or what they had to put up with to be in a situation that you can consider “easy”.

This is universal – millionaires, students, the cool kid, the party animal, the introvert and everyone in between has more to their story than the superficial restricted one you see. Never dismiss them as having it easy if you don’t know the entire story.

8. There’s no shame in saying “I don’t know”

There is a stigma in some cultures to admit ignorance about a particular topic. Don’t dance around the issue – just say I don’t know. Honesty is way smarter.

9. More money will NEVER solve your problems

As long as you are not living in the street or going hungry, then you do not “need” more money. When you spend enough time with people who are actually living on next to nothing, but having a full life, then you will truly understand this. Everything that is wonderful about life doesn’t cost a penny, and the rest is way cheaper than you think it is.

10. Possessions own you

Look at the real reason you want to buy more expensive crap and realise that it all comes down to validation from others in one way or another. You don’t really need any of it unless it’s directly related to essentials in how you work or survive.

The need to buy new crap dictates your life – it fixes you in one location with that house and furniture, and it governs how much money you need to earn. And it almost never actually enriches your life in any way. The less you own the better.

11. TV is the greatest black hole of time available to mankind

I wasted so much of my life before age 21 spending 3-4 hours a day watching TV. Following shows that I “had” to see, in order to “relax”. I regret almost every second of it. The whole world was passing me by outside.

TV was an important part of the 20st century, bringing communication and news to the masses, but now it’s wasteful. People get biased news through it, when much better alternatives are available, watch terrible TV shows through it that teach them nothing, and it sucks so many hours of their lives away that they seem to forget about when they delude themselves into thinking that they don’t have time to pursue real passions in life.

TVs encourage people to be antisocial. The only TVs you should be watching are someone else’s – go to your friend’s house to share a series you like if you must, or go to the bar with your mates to watch sports. Your life will not be enriched by sitting at home watching a screen with zero interactivity to it.

12. The Internet is the greatest tool ever available to us, but daily use must be capped

Unlike TVs, the Internet is interactive and allows you to take part and become virtually social. It connects communities all over the world and without it, the last 8 years simply would have been much more difficult for me for many reasons.

Having said that, it has the same potential as TV to become a black hole of time. Use it to enrich your life, but put a cap on how much you use it so you can get out and live that life. Replacing one screen with another (even when you use it to chat to people) is just escaping the real world, which is much more beautiful.

13. Get outside and do something with other people

My favourite website in the world is Couchsurfing.org, precisely because I spend so little time on it. It has simplified my travel life tremendously by allowing me to host people to maintain my languages, and to search it for interesting people to meet up with.

The world that is worth experiencing is not in books or on TV or computer screens. It’s with other human beings. Stop being shy and get out and meet them!

14. Speaking only English is incredibly limiting to non-tourist travellers

If you are visiting a country for a weekend, then you can check into your hotel and order food in an expensive restaurant and get a guided tour in English. You can even make local university educated friends, and successfully create a bubble to protect you from the local language for as long as you like, and delude yourself into thinking that this is the way things are.

But you will never truly experience the local culture if you limit yourself to being able to interact on a deep level just the well educated part of it. English-speaking travellers miss out on so much – not speaking English has defined most of my travels and the amazing experiences I have had would have been impossible if I didn’t try to learn the local languages.

ANYONE can learn a language. When I was 21 I thought I couldn’t do it, but one day I put all the bullshit excuses to one side and just spoke it. Speaking a language from day one is the ‘secret’ to being able to learn it quicker and at any age.

15. Modern foreign culture does not have to satisfy your stereotypes

Every country in the world is modernising but this does not mean that they are westernising or Americanising. What makes them unique does not have to satisfy your “quaint” tourist-brochure view of them. Leave ignorant stereotypes aside and have an open mind about how modern life is like in that culture.

Not all Irish people drink, not all Brazilians samba and play football, and Germans, Dutch, Filipinos and everyone else will surprise you if you leave your presumptions about them at the airport.

Respect the differences, try to adapt to them yourself and realise that to them you might seem backwards in many ways.

16. Take your time

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living in countries that are more “easy going” it’s that they are way wiser than the rest of us in their pace of life. People and countries that do everything quicker also do it worse. Take it easy and go slowly.

Enjoy every bite of food, walk at a slow pace and take in your surroundings, let the other person finish their side of the conversation while you listen attentively, and stop in the middle of your day, close your eyes or look at nature and become aware of your breathing.

17. You can’t please everyone

“I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everyone” – Bill Cosby.

State your opinion and stick to your guns. If you are confident enough and share your idea with enough people, you will piss off someone no matter what you talk about. That’s their problem, not yours.

18. Trying to be cool or following trends is for mindless sheep

Peer pressure is for people who are afraid of their individuality. Stand up for yourself, and go against the flow if that’s what you feel is best. What’s cool now will be frozen over in a few years.

19. Make mistakes – and LOTS of them!

Mistakes are how we learn. Failures are the stepping stones to success.

20. Wear sunscreen

Seriously. Protect your skin. Follow that and all other advice in this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfq_A8nXMsQ

21. Stop thinking so much and act

People think their way out of doing everything that’s worth doing in life. The reason I feel I’m getting so much done in the last years is precisely because of how much time I give to over-analysing whether I should do something important or not: None.

22. Dance and sing whenever possible

Dancing and singing are great releases and forms of expression. It’s hard not to feel good after a session of either!

23. Making new friends is easy and so is appreciating your current ones

My entire eight years travel has been alone. I arrive in a new nation without a single friend waiting for me in many cases. I have no connections, but I make them anyway. I find a party online and go straight to it and say hi to everyone. Soon, if I try enthusiastically enough, I’ll find people I can socialise with on a regular basis.

If you are friendly, genuine and charming, making friends with people from every culture and background is possible.

When people who are surrounded by family, networks, work and school colleagues, other friends, clubs and communities they are a part of… tell me that it’s hard to meet new people I feel like slapping them in the face to wake them up to the opportunities around them, which I haven’t had consistently for almost a decade. Look around you!

24. You don’t know what you’ve got ’till its gone

Don’t take anything for granted. I couldn’t afford to pay for accommodation one night and had to sleep outside on a rock because of it. Ever since then I appreciate having a bed, couch or hammock, no matter how small or where it may be, because I know what it’s like to not have one. One night was enough to burn it into me – I sigh a breath of relief every time I go to bed now.

I went partially deaf due to an ear infection for two weeks and appreciate my hearing and all the beautiful sounds around me all the more because I got it back. I also gained an appreciation for signed communication that I’d take advantage of several years later.

I’ve never lost anyone close to me, but I hug my family members and tell them I love them every chance I get, and clear any bad air with friends and don’t hold back on sharing my emotions with them. Life is too short – if I lost anything important to me then I want to make sure that I never wasted the time I did have with it or with him or her.

25. Swallow your pride and apologise

Never hold a grudge and never try to win every argument. Sometimes it’s best to let your pride slide for the sake of clearing the air with someone. Be the first to say you’re sorry. Never wait for the other person to make the first move.

26. Doing anything specifically to impress people is stupid

People will never give you the validation you seek if you try to be a dancing monkey for them. Saying how many languages you speak, how rich you are, who you know, where you studied or what you do for a living, or trying to show-off in any other way to get someone to like you, or working for these things just for the bragging rights will leave you really disappointed.

People are impressed by those who aren’t trying to impress them and are comfortable in themselves and social and interesting. Sometimes to be “interesting” all you have to do is be a good listener.

27. People are not alone in being alone

One of the most frequent questions I get asked as a long-term solo traveller is if I feel lonely. The short answer is no. The long answer would require an entire post in itself.

But the fact of the matter is that loneliness is much more common around the world than I previously thought it was. I was actually much more lonely in my university (fixed) life than I am now. And I meet many people who have vast networks of social groups who feel desperately lonely because they feel nobody gets them.

Then others who simply changed their lifestyle in some way (not necessarily by travel, but perhaps marriage or starting a demanding job) and have lost contact with all their childhood friends because of it, also feel lonely.

I’ve talked to many people who are convinced they are the only ones who feel this way. Each time I hear a similar story I can hear the Police in my head “seems I’m not alone in being alone…” Believe it or not I find this very comforting when I am genuinely separated by thousands of kilometres from anyone who even knows what my name is. Even though nobody is in exactly the same situation, the amount of people in the world I’ve met tells me that I’m very likely not the only one in such a situation, even at that very second.

No matter how lonely you might feel, there is always someone who can relate to you. Perhaps you can’t talk to them right now, but they are out there.

28. Love isn’t “all” you need, but if you don’t have it in some form, your life will be very empty

We don’t need love to survive, but without it there will be a huge hole inside you. Make sure that every day you have someone (family, friends, lover) to remind you that you are special. If you postpone this part of your life until later, after you get or do that thing you want to do, you will continue in that lonely path indefinitely.

29. The most important lessons in life can never be expressed in black and white, but must be experienced

I thought I knew it all back in university – and that everything of importance can be found in books. But the truth is that the most important things in life are very hard to put in black and white, including what I’ve said in this post.

When most of the world’s information is at our fingertips, a mouseclick away, it makes it feel like we don’t need to experience any more. Movies, books, or “living vicariously through someone else” means we can apparently get the general gist of anything.

This is false. Experience is the greatest teacher of all. Stop reading about or watching the world passively and start living it.

—————-

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this list. Since my birthday was yesterday I want you to remember that in about 5 weeks or so I’ll be making my delayed birthday request. It will cost you nothing but 2 minutes of your time. Please don’t forget it. Subsribe by RSS, enter your email in the top-right of the site, follow me on twitter and like this site’s page on Facebook (in the right sidebar) to find out what that is when the time comes!

Please let me know what you think about this list in the comments below!

Similar Posts:

• Is long-term solo travel… lonely?
• Do you need to be rich to travel the world?
• How to travel the world on the cheap
• Frequently asked questions for a long term traveller
• Easy lifestyle adjustments to get a huge boost when things are going slowly

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29 life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Today’s guest post is from Geraldine DeRuiter who writes at Everywhereist.

While speaking in Vancouver, I met many fascinating people with some incredible stories, but one of them that touches close to home was Geraldine’s. She came up to me on the day after my TBEX talk and gave the most incredible account of her night before to me, so I insisted that she share it with my readers whenever she could!

Tell them all about it Geraldine!

——–

I am a perfectionist.

If it sounds like I’m bragging, I’m not. Being a perfectionist in no way means that you are perfect – only that you are annoyed when you aren’t (which is basically all of the time). My quest for perfectionism generally leads to frustration, tears, and the occasional ill-timed temper tantrum (usually the night before a flight).

So when, a few weeks ago, I heard Benny provide his tips for learning a new language, one of which was “Don’t try to be perfect,” I immediately stood up and screamed, “YOU ARE A MADMAN.”

Okay, fine, not really. It was a crowded convention hall in Vancouver, after all. I couldn’t really pop out of my chair and start yelling. But I wanted to, because what he said sounded truly crazy to my perfectionist ears.

Benny went on to say that he didn’t try to speak a language perfectly – he just did his best. Even when he knew he was messing up, he didn’t let that deter him.

Fine, I thought. That might work for him. After all, he’s charming and Irish. That means that he can basically get away with anything (See Ferrell, Colin). I was pretty sure that I, as a neurotic American, could never have a conversation with someone while using the wrong tense of a verb. I was convinced native speakers would quietly ridicule me when I said something profoundly ridiculous. “My husband is a chinchilla”, I’d accidentally blurt out in broken Spanish. “We were married in a giant cheese!”

It would be mortifying. No, clearly Benny’s tactics were not for me. I’d rather not do something at all than do it incorrectly. I sighed, and decided my once-fluent español was gone forever.

My new amiga

Later that evening, I met up with my husband Rand (who I had mercilessly dragged along with me to TBEX 2011) and a few of his colleagues who happened to live in town. One gentleman brought along his wife – a lovely gal named Adriana (She’s with me in the photo above). She was originally from Mexico, but had moved to Canada after marrying her husband.

“Your English is fantastic!” I told her, sincerely impressed.

“No, no,” she replied modestly, “I make so many mistakes!”

I reassured her that wasn’t the case. Besides, who didn’t make a few mistakes here and there when speaking a second language?

And as soon as those words left my mouth, I realized something: I didn’t expect other people to be perfectionists when it came to language. So why did I expect it of myself? Was I really so afraid of a few grammatical errors that I was going to give up trying altogether? Because that truly sounded crazy.

Taking a deep breath, I figured I’d give it a shot.

“Yo hablo un poquito de español,” I said, rifling my brain for my long-forgotten high school Spanish. “Pero olividé casi todo.” I speak a little Spanish. But I’ve forgotten most of it!

Her eyes widened with surprise.

“How long have you lived in Canada?” I asked her, trying not to overthink the words I chose.

“Seven years,” she said. She proceeded to tell me how she and her husband met. I, in turn, told her how I met Rand, and a bit about myself. My words came slowly at first, and then sped up as we continued talking. If I couldn’t recall a certain word, I’d just rephrase what I was trying to say. I remembered more and more of Benny’s tips – using context to understand what words meant, taking my time, and above all, not giving up and reverting back to English.

Oh, and I might have possibly had a few sips of tequila to help jog my memory of the Spanish I once knew. (Legal disclaimer: that tip isn’t from Benny, but believe me: it worked.)

A “perfect” imperfect evening

After a while, I didn’t even realize we were speaking Spanish – we discussed things that didn’t require an extensive vocabulary on my part, but still managed to not be trivial: family, life, love, careers. We chatted on and on when suddenly I realized that everyone at the table was looking at us.

“You … you speak Spanish?,” someone asked.

“Um … apparently, yes.” I said, smiling.

“She speaks far better than you do,” Adriana admonished her husband. “His Spanish is terrible,” she whispered to me, confidentially, and I laughed and told her that up until very recently (like, say, twenty minutes ago), so was mine.

I had given up on Spanish, figuring that if I couldn’t speak it perfectly, there was no point. In the last 13 years, I’d barely uttered a word of it. I’d felt a little pang of sadness every time I heard it spoken; it was a reminder of a language that I had lost. I realized now that wasn’t the case. I didn’t need to speak Spanish perfectly to hold onto it – I just needed to speak it.

When the time came to say our good-byes, I hugged Adriana and told her to email me if she was ever in Seattle. She promised she would. I hope she does, because I need to thank her. Had she not been there that night, it likely would have been years (and maybe an expensive refresher class or two) before I tried speaking Spanish again.

As we walked away, my husband threw his arm around me and hugged me close. So engrossed was I in my impromptu foreign language class, that I had barely talked to him all night.

“How was your evening?” he asked, as we walked in the fading light of a warm Vancouver day.

“Just about perfect,” I said, smiling, and thinking that maybe, just maybe, Benny wasn’t such a madman after all.

———–

I hope some of you see the benefits of just trying and ignoring unhelpful perfectionism. If Geraldine can do it after over a decade of never using or studying Spanish then there’s nothing stopping you!

Make sure to check out her blog for more of her excellent writing, and to leave comments below about her incredible evening!

Similar Posts:

• Perfectionist paralysis
• Fake it ’till you make it
• Case study: How Niall Doherty reached conversational competence in Spanish in 3.5 months
• Why my destiny was to never speak Spanish and how I did it anyway
• Embracing embarrassing mistakes

----------------------------
How ditching perfectionism helped me speak Spanish all evening for the first time is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

There are many myths about language learning that I’m trying to dispel as nothing more than lazy excuses on this blog.

The fact that you are too old, your destiny (genes, background etc.) is against you, you can’t afford to travel and there are no opportunities to speak where you live or systems to speak with natives online, you can’t roll your Rs, you already spent years learning and got nowhere, and many many other excuses.

But there will always be more excuses. Lazy people are imaginative in that way!

Today I want to tackle one that isn’t quite unique to Northern Europe, since English speakers will be lazy everywhere despite the advantages of English-free travel, but it is especially prominent here: “Northern Europeans will only ever speak English to you. Why bother even learning their language?”

While I will be focusing on my Dutch experience, I have been talking to other successful language learners living in Scandinavia who confirm that these observations work there just as well.

Yes, it’s true that you can live mostly by English here

The first major reason to not even try is that they all speak English anyway.

Although I have barely used any English at all, I can confirm from seeing tourists using it with them that their level is generally excellent.

Pretty much all of them still make mistakes, many of which I recognise as Dutch-influenced (such as I am sitting here/in school etc. instead of simply I am here/in school , since “to be” is used way less in Dutch) and if they haven’t lived abroad they still have an accent, but this will never hinder conversations. So yes, you could live your life entirely through English here.

And many do; I have met a staggering number of foreigners who have maintained the most impressive collective English-bubble I’ve seen anywhere. I met a man in Prague who had lived there for a decade without learning Czech, but here that actually seems to be more the norm than the exception!

The reasons for this working so well (apart from people’s downright laziness to learn the language of the country they live in), are actually an interesting long-term aspect of Dutch culture that I’d like to discuss in another post; basically they are very welcoming and open minded about world cultures, but leave them to do their own thing with no pressure or encouragement to integrate.

The philosophy of living apart together seems to be huge here, so people not learning their language is not just tolerated, it’s accepted as almost the obvious thing to do, by the locals themselves.

Because of this I met very few foreigners seriously learning Dutch (mostly Germans, Eastern Europeans etc.). It’s no wonder locals were shocked when I started speaking to them in their own language.

Once you try, there is no resistance

Yes, they were surprised, yes some of them were confused at why I’d want to learn Dutch, and yes they were amazed at how quickly I could speak at the level I was.

But you know what? Despite hearing the excuse for years, and people warning me many times in advance when I announced plans to come here, if I spoke Dutch to someone they NEVER replied in English. Not once. Not even a SINGLE time!!

I’ve heard this excuse for years about Northern Europeans. I didn’t get it my first week in Berlin either.

After 8 entire weeks here, there’s no way this can be pure luck. The 25 people I met in one night, those I’ve talked to in the street and in restaurants and bars, the many people I’ve met in parties and various social events, and even the few friends I’ve somehow managed to convince to squeeze me into their agendas on a more regular basis; they’ve all spoken just in Dutch with me.

There are exceptions, but these were when I didn’t begin in Dutch. For example, after a quick intro with some English, I only spoke Dutch with one flatmate who was away for my first week. However, with the other flatmate, I started speaking in English with him and continued for the first and second week and found it incredibly hard to get out of that routine with him for the whole stay.

I also met up with a good Dutch friend of mine from Esperanto meetings shortly after I had arrived, as well as another language blogger who is Dutch and didn’t even try to speak Dutch to the two of them. I was used to using other languages with them in the past.

But this just proves that if the learner is lazy, they will get no results. It is also incredibly hard to break a routine with someone once you have set it and “what language our relationship will be in” is an incredibly important decision to make from the start! So I’m really glad that I got into the routine from the start with the vast majority of people.

The only other times I spoke in English with the Dutch was at Couchsurfing meetings, while other foreigners (who know no Dutch) were present. To speak Dutch in this case, even when there are five Dutch speakers and one foreigner, would be very un-Dutch-like.

Why some people MAY get answered in English, and what to do differently

I didn’t get answered back in English (apart from the examples above where I wasn’t even speaking in Dutch) because of a few factors that are entirely up to the learner. Do not blame the local culture for this!

There are many good ways to learn to speak quickly and it’s up to you to be convincing. The following points are especially what I did differently to many other foreigners here:

1. Work on reducing your accent, especially your R!!

I’d say this is a priority; way more than when you should study grammar. I spoke terrible Dutch from the start, and slightly less terrible Dutch after a few weeks, but I did it with no strong accent.

People here simply associate an English-accent with laziness or unwillingness to learn and may make the switch even if you are genuinely trying, because they have met so many others with your accent in the past who simply were not really interested in learning.

This is even true when they know you are an English speaker! I pretty much always told people I was Irish, but the accent told them otherwise and that’s what helped keep them from switching. I’d say this is more of a subconscious tendency than a conscious decision.

The Dutch R that is rolled at the back of the throat is quite unique, and I didn’t put in the work to learn it this time. But I found my rolled R from Spanish/Italian to be a useful substitute, especially since they do use this R in some dialects of Dutch. I’ve been told that my accent sounded Icelandic or Italian or Eastern European, and since the tendency is to not speak English with these groups (at least the latter ones), they didn’t with me.

2. Speak in Dutch from the start!

There are many reasons I suggest a “speak from day one” approach. Efficiency in learning quickest is the obvious, but one I don’t mention as an important reason that really needs to be emphasised in this case is that it is very hard to change the language you are used to speaking with someone. As shown in the very rare examples above, I am as prone to this issue as anyone else, and I’m really glad I was very restricted in who I did use English with.

Yes, it will be frustrating – to be honest my time in Amsterdam has indeed been quite frustrating because I know that a huge amount of the city is partying in other languages and I could have simply joined them, and it was a challenge to make friends with the Dutch (more on that in a later post).

Not speaking Dutch would have been the easy road, but then I would not have made genuine cultural discoveries. If I was living here long term, the sacrifice of a few months of intensively learning Dutch would enhance years living here dramatically. It’s worth the sacrifice. I made it before in my first foreign language and the pay-offs have lasted me almost a decade so far!

Start as you mean to go on; speak in Dutch (or whatever the language may be) with everyone you meet! And one way to do this is:

3. Give yourself a head-start

If you are already in the country, then you have to make the tough switch as soon as you can, but if you aren’t, you have a HUGE advantage of time to be able to prepare yourself!

While I like to move to a new country with zero preparation (I’m doing it again mid-June!) this is one aspect of my language learning that I highly discourage others to copy. I do it for the adventure and for the challenge, (it’s fun) but it is definitely not helping me learn the language. You will never see me advise people to wait until you get there before you start. When people email me and say “I’m moving to Spain etc. in six months” I always reply to say, then why haven’t you started speaking already now??

While I didn’t do it with Dutch, I had an interesting head-start anyway thanks to my German, which I could use as a crutch to get me into the flow of a similar language (I won’t have this advantage with my next language). That was my head-start; although I certainly wouldn’t suggest you learn German in order to learn Dutch The point is that you need a head-start. If you are going to these countries, try and study the right basic materials, and then when you have some ground-work, after a few hours or a few days, look for online or in-person spoken opportunities immediately to get you into the flow of using it with a native.

The secret is to hit the ground running when you get to the country. As a polyglot, I have a different head-start in that I’ve done this before in general so I have no hang-ups about the whole experience, but you will find it incredibly hard to arrive in a country and just switch to a foreign language with no experience in doing so already. If you have time to prepare, use it. Do not squander months before moving; use them to speak now.

4. Be convincing and confident

Even in my first days speaking Dutch, I could still keep people interested in following me as I desperately tried to think of simple words to use. My strategy is to inject a lot of personality into my conversations. In my first weeks I generally don’t have a clue how to say so many things, but I say the little I do know with incredible confidence.

Hesitating, umming, second guessing yourself, thinking too much, squirming and generally showing through your body language that you are having a terribly uncomfortable time speaking their language, will mean that since they are nice people they will speak English to you! It’s them being generous to save you from this torture.

Don’t torture yourself, think of something quickly that may have some mistakes in it and spit it out. The only people I find that grammar mistakes in natural conversations truly annoy are some language teachers or pedantic other learners. The vast majority of the population you will meet are happy with hearing you try hard and don’t mind if you make mistakes as long as you do it well enough to get the message across.

When you start well and keep up this flow, within a few months you’ll be making dramatic progress towards fluency!

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My time in Amsterdam is coming to an end! I still have a few other observations to share though, about the Dutch and their language. Hopefully this point about how they will NOT reply to you in English if you do it right will be taken into account by other learners; if you try a little harder you can speak in their language to them all the time!

When you do this, you will open doors to many cultural discoveries that are simply not possible through English alone. I hope more try; despite frustration in trying to get to know Dutch, who tend to be more closed off than other cultures I am used to, I am very glad I stuck to it. I’ve learned so much in the last 8 weeks, and will share some of that with you in more posts soon.

Your thoughts on this appreciated in the comments below!
Similar Posts:

• Learning Dutch after German (and English): What are the differences?
• The Pareto (80-20) principle in language learning
• 6 easy ways to roll your R
• The most important thing to think about before doing something important or nerve-wrecking
• Learning Brazilian Portuguese if you already speak Spanish

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Another myth busted: Northern Europeans DON’T only speak English to you is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

In years of constantly comparing the many successful vs unsuccessful language learners to see what really makes them different, I can share another huge realisation with you today.

Many of the major questions most people start asking themselves in language learning are, in my opinion, things that should be coming much later in the priority of most important questions.

You may first ask:

Which course material is best? Is Rosetta Stone better than Pimsleur? Should I learn grammar first or later? How do I find the time to learn? Is my language too hard? What if people laugh at me when I make mistakes?

Many of these are important things to consider, but they aren’t dealing with what I am finding really separates successful and unsuccessful language learners:

Why are you learning this language?

Before you jump out with a snappy answer, I need to explain this “why” in better context. Those of you who watch TED talks will perhaps have already seen this video some time ago. I stumbled upon it again recently and started thinking how relevant it is to language learning.

The video is actually aimed at businesses (“people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”) and trying to inspire leaders, but a lot of the advice and the examples (Wright brothers, Martin Luther King Jr.) are applicable to so many fields. Check it out:

[RSS/email subscribers please click through to the site to see this]

Basically, in modern society people always tend ask the What and How questions first. They feel they are more important than any other question.

And yet those who really make a difference ask why first and then go on to figure out the best what and how to get back to that why, which is always central.

Focus on the why in your language learning and other projects

With languages; “What do I learn?” (material) and “How do I learn it?” (plan of action) are always the first questions people seem to ask. So the big questions tend to be like those I’ve listed above.

This is flawed focus in my opinion. These practical questions are simply consequential for me and many other successful learners. When people are so focused on these questions then experience tells me that their progress will be slowed down dramatically.

The most successful language learners that I keep coming across, regardless of age, natural talent, riches etc. think about why they are learning the language more than anything. The one thing we all share is passion. You don’t need to learn a language exactly like I do or what some other successful learner does to be successful. Almost any method can work if your focus is right.

If the answer to “why” for you is something quantifiable or superficial, like get a better job, be able to chat up Brazilian girls, impress people, pass an exam, etc. then there is no real “why“. All you are interested in is consequences. Actually using the language is irrelevant; these results are what you are truly “passionate” about.

This is one reason a lot of us never learn languages in school. There’s no real drive to. Good teachers inspire passion for the language, not explain conjugations better than others.

Why = unquantifiable passion

My reason for learning languages, as I keep mentioning, is communication and cultural discovery. This isn’t something that I can really quantify or measure.

It’s not something that someone can do better or worse than me (and so, using measurements like “number of words I know” as your basis of comparison is lost on me entirely as incredibly irrelevant). It’s more of a gut feeling that I know it’s what I want.

Speaking foreign languages enriches my life in the friendships I’ll make and experiences I’ll have (why I do it), so from here then I will look at the hows and whats that will get me to my goal quickest, and formulate my own particular plan.

I’m very practical in how I do it, but because my end uses are clear, I will learn for those uses instead of some vague general “perfectly master every single aspect of the language” which actually means nothing.

Some people have different passions (writing, reading, enjoying plays etc.) and that’s fine; they’ll find methods that work for them supported on that passion. This is another reason why there can’t be one way to learn a language. I can only suggest what I personally feel works best for speaking-focused passion, and some people need to be honest about if that’s what they really want.

Stop focusing so much on your hows and whats and start thinking more about why you are learning the language. That drive will bring you to find your resulting best hows and whats with that end in mind. If there is no strong passion that you always refer back to as the core of what you are doing, then all you are doing is studying a bunch of grammar rules and vocabulary tables.

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Thoughts on this? Disagree? Or what’s your “why” in learning your target language? Let us know in the comments!
Similar Posts:

• The ONE thing that will ultimately lead to success
• How to learn a language in hours, not years
• Speak! Or stop pretending you want to
• Your worst enemy on the path to success? You!
• Easy lifestyle adjustments to get a huge boost when things are going slowly

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Ask WHY first (not how/what): the most important issue ignored in language learning is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Being a perfectionist when it comes to language learning is one of the main reasons so many people never end up using a language they’ve studied. They are paralysed by the thought of making a mistake. They don’t know all the words & all the grammar, therefore they “can’t” speak yet.

It’s sad how much this bogus mentality slows people down and even prevents them from ever trying.

Today I want to share a fundamental concept behind how I can speak languages shortly after arriving in a country, and progress so quickly, as many others in efficient immersion environments do. It is based on my interpretation of the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle.

The Pareto principle

This rule is applied in so many fields and in its simplest form, basically states that you get 80% of the results from 20% of the work. (Other interpretations are possible, like 80% of the wealth of a country typically belonging to 20% of its population).

While there is some merit to using the number 80, the actual quantity doesn’t interest me as much as the fact that you get most of the end-results from a fraction of what you put into something.

And the other way around is that a certain percentage of a language is simply irrelevant to me in my day to day dealings. Why do I need to bother with it right now?

The irrelevant top percentage

A non-Pareto approach to language learning would imply that you need to know everything before you can speak. If you don’t know how to say aardvark or armadillo in French or Chinese, then your level simply isn’t good enough.

I say differently; many words like these are so uncommon and unlikely to show up, that not knowing them will make no difference at all in your life. If you compare two natives of a language, where one knows the word armadillo and the other doesn’t, then will their lives really be that different given the same circumstances?

I extend this to slightly more common words: at the moment I don’t believe I know how to say “shoelace” in any of my target languages (even if I was awarded a C2 diploma in that language), although I’d recognise that word based on seeing and hearing it previously a few times and especially based on extrapolating thanks to the context and perhaps word etymology.

So when given the option, which do you think I choose between studying the word shoelace, or to just walking up to a native and conversing and socialising, and ignoring the fact that such a silly word isn’t in my head yet and isn’t going to ultimately lead to the end of the world.

When starting off

Taking this even further you’d be surprised to see what you can do with very little vocabulary and a good sense of understanding the context of what is going on around you and non-verbal communication.

With this in mind, I speak a language pretty much immediately after I start learning it. Maybe I won’t know how to conjugate verbs in the past tense? Well then I’ll just say “yesterday I eat” while waving behind me (a gesture which I’ve found to be pretty international; if I ever get met with confused looks I’ll figure out how it’s different there). Maybe I don’t know how to say small yet; then I’ll just say “not big”.

Learning new languages in spoken contexts for as long as I have means that I’ve come up with many ways to get around not knowing a word, usually good enough to even make the other person unaware that I’m using a workaround.

You can’t know everything, so I try not to think about my limitations and try my best to figure out how to get my point across.

When I hear a reply I’ll try to understand individual words (since getting the whole phrase will be out of reach), and extrapolate thanks to the usually extremely generous context the word is sandwiched into, and get a pretty good idea what they’re talking about.

Is this a good place to be in forever and if you want to have deep meaningful conversations in a language? No. But saying that you can’t get value out of this stage and it should be avoided entirely is an extreme, unnecessary approach for people too scared to try and see what they can get out of it.

When you do it well enough, natives will not lose their patience with you. Here in the Netherlands, I was warned that nobody would ever speak Dutch to me in the early stages. It turns out it was nothing more than lazy excuses from expats that weren’t trying hard enough, or doing it in an awkward way that makes the other person feel uncomfortable, regardless of their actual language use. I have ways to make it more fun for the other person to listen to me.

As well as this, I suspect people aren’t speaking English with me because I am rolling my R so it’s harder to even guess that I may be an English speaker. (You can hear what I sound like after a week and a half of Dutch here). This is of course yet another aspect of languages independent of grammar and vocabulary.

You’re ready either NOW or you never will be

I hate it when I hear people saying they’ll wait until they are “ready” before they speak. This is a procrastination technique motivated by nothing more than fear of failure. Fail fast & fail often and you’ll succeed way more regularly. Slipping up and making some mistakes while learning a language is totally natural; avoiding doing it is avoiding using the language as it was meant to be used; for communication!

There will never be a day after years of pure study when you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and realise that the promised day has finally arrived and you suddenly start effortlessly speaking like a native. It’s ridiculous to consider such a thing if you haven’t already been practising.

Saying you have “no words” is ludicrous. If it’s a European (or otherwise related) language you have tons before you even start, and even if it isn’t, then sit down for a few hours and learn some crucial basic vocabulary and phrases. Then you no longer have “no words”, simple as that.

Learn 20 words now and then use the hell out of them. Be imaginative. Then learn more words and you’ll see that it’s ever so slightly easier. By the time you can hold an OK conversation, a few short weeks or months into intensive use with natives, you’ll be able to survive 80% of normal situations in that language, despite putting in way less than 20% of the work most people do to get to a similar stage after years. It’s not the years you put in after all that make you successful.

Efficiency at its best

As I’ve said before, my background is in engineering, so I like to look at the most efficient way to reach my end-goals and will experiment until I see something that produces real results. I’ll produce something within a deadline, no matter what. That means speaking now.

If this doesn’t float perfectionists’ boat, then frankly I don’t care. I don’t use my languages in exam situations where each mistake is a big red X. My priority is communication, and using the little I have imaginatively is how I do it. Necessity forces you to progress, so you will reach a higher level much quicker.

Mastering a language does take time. I have reached fluency in a language in a matter of months several times, but continue to try to improve on what I have. You will never reach a day when you say you are “ready” and your work is done. Fluency is not necessarily an end-goal, it’s just a useful milestone to aim for after a few months.

But the fact that I need to tidy up a few edges of something that is definitely fluent, does not take away what I can do now with the language, and all the incredible things you can indeed do in the mean time before reaching fluency.

Successful language learners find ways to use the little they know in the maximum possible ways; this adaptation of Pareto’s principle is an absolute must for people focused on speaking well as quickly as possible. Hell, it’s important for achieving anything. If you wait until it’s perfect (the 100% stage), then you’ll be waiting forever.

Squeeze the little information currently available to you to get the best out of it!

And let me know your thoughts on this as always in the comments below
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• Why adults are better learners than kids (So NO, you’re not too old)

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The Pareto (80-20) principle in language learning is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

Kids are great! I was an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher for several years in several countries, teaching mostly children, and I could see how quick they were at learning a second language.

Of course, who of us doesn’t want to go back to our childhood, when things were simpler and the world was full of endless possibilities (which too many people claim it somehow isn’t any more…)? Along these lines, one of my favourite songs in the world is a Brazilian one about never losing touch with your childhood.

So it’s no wonder we want them to pounce on any advantages they have now to do something better, which they may lose out on later.

This is why when some misleading study is produced (the criteria for which I’d say are up for question) saying that children learn better than adults (especially with languages), if it encourages you to have your child learn a language now then by all means, put your faith in the study! Raising bilingual children is an incredibly wise investment, and they’ll surely thank you for it one day.

But to most people, such concepts are used as nothing more than an excuse for why they can’t do anything. If I had a penny for every time I heard someone say they are “too old” to learn a language, I’d simply buy the entire target countries I move to while I start their language from scratch as an adult.

It’s a bogus self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you are too old, you won’t try at all because it’s “hopeless” and you won’t learn. You didn’t learn “therefore” you are too old(!) Ad nauseam.

Biased and ultimately useless studies

The problem is that statements like “children are better learners” don’t actually benefit anyone beyond encouraging a parent to work harder sooner to have his/her child learn now.

If you tell a six year old such a thing, it’s hardly going to motivate him much. He’ll learn anyway if other factors are beneficial.

Most times I have seen references to these studies they do them in closed or overly academic environments, which prove nothing more than “children learn better in this environment under these exact criteria”. Exposing both adults and children to the same environment is wasteful because adults and children learn and think differently.

Even when an efficient immersion environment is applied, it’s still not a good gauge because children and adults immerse too differently, and even as individuals will have too vastly different outcomes.

Adults have advantages these studies ignore, which I want to discuss in this post.

“Childish” learning strategies

I am definitely against all of this “learn like a baby” crap I see floating around in the online language learning community. It’s nothing short of ludicrous!

You aren’t a baby so stop acting like one. It has inspired this wasteful passive listening pandemic – “it works for babies, so it must be good for me!” ignoring pretty damn obvious things like babies don’t speak because they can’t yet not because it interferes with their “inactive absorption” of the language.

People are welcome to be sceptical about what I achieve in these missions but if you compare what I and other efficient language hackers do in just a few months, to children, the adults will win every time. Studies end up covering inefficient learning techniques, which are neither well suited to adults or children.

When you look at the long term, then you see children come out on top in terms of not having a strong accent and less likeliness of “fossilised” mistakes, but adults can work to reduce and eliminate their accent and mistakes. Most simply don’t.

For example, I found that taking singing lessons helped me to reduce my accent in Portuguese enough to convince several Brazilians that I was from Rio back while I was living there. Nearly every adult simply just accepts a foreign accent as a permanent stamp after childhood, or doesn’t use non-academic means to reduce theirs.

Because of this terrible pessimism about adult learning that people refer to so much, I want to share some reasons why adults are better at learning languages:

Adults vs babies

To say that you start a second language off from scratch with “literally nothing” makes me feel like you need a decent slap to the face to wake you up to reality, no matter what the language is.

Forgetting obvious advantages with tonnes of common words (which of course are more beneficial between somewhat languages, such as between European ones), a baby has so much extra work that you are totally ignoring.

From birth it takes you years to be able to confidently distinguish between all sounds in your native language. When you start learning Spanish, Italian, German, Hungarian, Czech etc. as an adult, don’t you realise everything you get to merrily skip over?

No need to learn how to distinguish m from n. Hell, no need to learn the vast majority of sounds that are the same between those languages. No need to develop the muscles in your voice box and tongue so you can simply attempt to make noises with them. No need to train your ear to be able to distinguish voices as male/female or even recognisable friends/family, and different to other noises from the environment. No need to be exposed to years of context of universal human interaction to indicate when someone is angry, shouting or asking a question. No need to learn the vast majority of international body language.

Don’t people get that they aren’t dealing with a separate species when they learn a new language? I’d argue that the majority of our communication is non-verbal. Not just body language, but status, clothes, beauty, facial expressions, how we walk, the volume/speed/certainty/intonation etc. with which you use your words.

Using this helped me have a very interesting train ride in India, communicating with many people despite never learning any words in their languages.

Of course you aren’t going to hold election debates or the like without any words, but if I held the same debate using the same words but wearing a ballet dress, speaking like Jack Sparrow, and looking at the wall while I do it, then nobody will listen to me.

There are mountains of such essential information for functioning in modern society that babies learn. That’s what I’d argue is what we take in in our first years. Vocabulary and grammar be damned – that’s not even a droplet on the tip of the iceberg. Such things are learned part-time by babies.

So don’t compare yourself to babies, don’t claim you should learn as they do, and stop complaining about the fact that you are starting off “from zero” or you will earn the title of baby in another context.

Adults are better learners than babies because they have already done the majority of the work that adults will simply take for granted.

Adults vs kids

Now, when you are a young child you don’t have to worry about most of what I said above. So you can focus on the language, right? Since our brain cells are constantly dying, I guess after age 12 (or whatever random number is in fashion these days) all hope is lost!

No! There is no actual agreement on this – it’s mostly based on extrapolations from studies based on first language acquisition.

I waited until I reached my 20s before taking on languages, and I am way better equipped to do it now than I would have been before age 10.

As an experienced language teacher I know the mountains of work it takes to make classes interesting and fun for the kids. They simply don’t want to be there, they want to be playing games or they want to go home unless you start to get convincing enough; so you have to play games with them in the language, go into class with a truckload of energy and enthusiasm and transfer that to the kids. In many cases, the kids don’t intrinsically want to be there. They are there (in the classroom) because their parents sent them.

While some kids are thrust into immersion environments (due to parents moving etc.) in most cases classrooms will be how they learn.

Adults have such a big advantage in that they can do things kids can’t. They can arrange to meet up with people to practice the language (and boy are there lots of ways to do this and that’s before you even consider all the online conversing possibilities!)

Since adults’ reasons to learn a language are not necessarily imposed on them by others, they will be more enthusiastic to do things that could otherwise not be as much fun. Some people don’t like touching grammar at all, and that’s fine, but after I’ve got a decent basic spoken level in a language I do appreciate getting a grammar book for some logical explanations. I have way more patience to put up with such technical explanations now than I did as a child. Explaining grammar to a child technically is quite a waste of time (you can only really do it with examples and context, which is indeed efficient but understanding a simple rule may be much quicker).

You don’t have to learn this way, but the fact that you can be more analytical really says something. You can see a word and reason that it must mean something based on the roots and suffices, whereas a child would only ever do this out of intuition from lots of exposure.

A child would take out a Nintendo DS while waiting somewhere, but an adult would be motivated enough to take out his smartphone and get back into SRS (even when he has no homework!!)

And then there are flexibilities! Even when a child is passionate about learning a language, they don’t have much say in how much time they put into it. As adults we can be flexible and examine our day to see how we can squeeze more time out of it to learn. An adult can save up money or plan to go to the target country, and buy the right learning materials or make other investments.

The one thing people forget about childhood is the fact that we simply didn’t (for good reason) have the option to decide to make such changes in our daily routine.

But even beyond all that, an adult can be much more focused than a child and this is one of the biggest contributors to how quickly they may ultimately learn.

No, you’re not too old

One of the biggest excuses I’ll always hear is “…but I’m too old”. It doesn’t matter what age the person is. I thought I was “too old” before I started actually giving a damn for real. I even see 50, 60 and 70 year olds who are successfully taking on new languages!

Some people decide to limit their lives based on generic statistics/studies run by people who don’t care about you and know nothing about you. They sweep you into an us-vs-them mindset. Children vs adults, extroverts vs introverts and so on. Or with no evidence at all you decide to put yourself in some bogus category of not talented enough or too old. You’ve just got bad luck(!)

I hate all of these labels because they do nothing but limit people. You’re too shy because you say you are, and have been feeding back that loop into your head all these years, and now you’re too old because you say you are, or because someone with a PhD in neurology and who has never even tried to speak a language, who lives on the opposite side of the planet, says you are.

Of course there are reasons that children are better learners. There always will be. Everyone has their own advantages they can bring to the table. But saying clear cut that children and infants are simply universally better, end-of-discussion, ignores a mountain of information. Stop making excuses, find out your own strengths and get learning and get speaking.

You can either be a part of the group propagating the too-old myth, or you can join me and others who are proving that such limitations are only ever for vague demographics, and can never apply by default to any individual.

Curious to hear your thoughts on this as always in the comments below!
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Why adults are better learners than kids (So NO, you’re not too old) is a post from: Fluent in 3 months. Click through to the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League weekly e-mail list (on the top right) for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!
If you liked this post, you'll love the Language Hacking Guide! Click here to see a video I made in 8 languages to introduce it!
As a subscriber you get a bonus sneak peak at the Language Hacking Guide! Download it here (zip)!

I hope you all liked the blog’s April Fools’ joke yesterday

Now I can finally share this video with you – it combines clever ASL videos I keep seeing online that sign lyrics to songs (one example shared here), with my need to have the entire Internet hear me sing in as many languages as possible

I give you, 6 languages, 1 singer, 1 signer: (or 7 languages including ASL)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iMnrUxXX0g

[If you liked this video, I'd really appreciate it if you would go to Youtube and give it a thumbs up & share it with your friends on Facebook!!]

In this video I sing 6 songs that are among the most well known ones for the languages I know best, while simultaneously signing the lyrics using ASL! I also added subtitle translations so you can understand what the songs you have likely heard some time before are actually about!

This demonstrates what I was discussing earlier in the week about ASL being so visual. I decided not to simply sign the lyrics directly (so you will notice some disagreement with what I’m signing and what the English translation of the song says), but to try to visually represent the song as best as I could.

I made sure to do the audio completely separately, so that I wouldn’t need to think about singing during the video. This also meant that I could sign differently to the lyrics and not get confused with English (or foreign language) word order. Although since I had only put a total of about 2 weeks into ASL at the time of recording, there are likely several mistakes

Sandra, who was helping me with my ASL over the last 2 weeks, helped me prepare the signs. Hopefully I remembered most of what she taught me when recording the video!

The songs are (in the order they appear in the video):

• La camisa negra – Juanes (A recent pop song that has become popular internationally) [Spanish]
• Poupée de cire, poupée de son – France Gall (Belgian winner of the 1965 Eurovision song contest) [French]
• Buachaill Ón Eirne – Corrs (They didn’t write the song, but it’s a good candidate for internationally recognised song in Irish since it’s on one of their albums) [Irish]
• Nel blu dipinto di blu – Domenico Modugno (Also known as “Volare”) [Italian]
• 99 Luftballons – Nena (Sorry for the obvious choice, but it is the most famous German song!) [German]
• Aquarela do Brasil – Ary Barroso (A well known song when you think of Brazil. Donald Duck first got me interested in my favourite country using this song!) [Portuguese]

Nothing in English or Esperanto this time!

Many thanks to my cameraman Markus, walk-in and props Jenny and Audiologist (i.e. official music “play button” presser) Karol.

Since I think the video is quite unique, I hope you think it’s worth sharing with your friends! Even if you aren’t interested in ASL, it may be cool to discover (from the subtitles) what parts of those songs you know are about!

As always, I look forward to reading your comments (both here and on Youtube). This video wraps up my brief, yet (clearly) fun first encounter with ASL and I’ll be ready to introduce my next language mission here on Tuesday!
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• American Sign Language: It’s not all in the hands

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6 languages, 1 singer, 1 signer