How to speak a language pretty well, starting from scratch, in just two months

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for further language learning tips! (What is RSS?)

1563505593_ad74e22d82_b I’d like to summarise everything I’ve discussed on the site regarding my first intensive language experiment, before I move on to my next one. Feel free to click the links to read more into depth about each point, as this article also links to all articles over the last 3 months.

I was initially aiming for fluency in 3 months, but unfortunately I had to stop short at just two months. Even so, after those two months I could hold a pretty good natural conversation with locals about a range of topics and my spoken accent in Czech was quite good. Of course, you can apply these methods to any language. Presuming you can learn a language in the country where it is spoken, this is what I would suggest that you do:

Before going

When starting to learn a language, make sure you have the right attitude to it; an optimistic viewpoint is essential and half of the battle in progressing in a language. Also, you should clearly define your motivations to learn that language and keep them in mind throughout the learning process. Try to get as much frustrating study work out of the way as you can in your home country; especially phrases and vocabulary; this will allow you to take advantage of the country and locals themselves for practise. I actually started learning in the foreign country itself this summer, but it can be extremely intimidating for many people without preparation before going.

Get yourself an inexpensive phrasebook to keep in your pocket/purse to take out and study in little 2-minute windows during the day whenever you have to wait. There are actually lots of ways to squeeze more time out of your day and it all adds up quickly! Make sure to use fun memory techniques to not forget all of those new words you are learning. Grammar is important, but unlike many linguists, I believe that it should be taken in very light chunks, and even partially ignored, in the early stages. In my personal opinion, focussing on grammar too much in the early stages is a huge mistake in the academic approach. The priority is to speak as much as possible and you need words and phrases for this, not rules. Study grammar after you can communicate a little and it will be much more interesting and help you “tidy up” what you’ve got.

If you’d like to practise the language before travelling, then use Couchsurfing to host natives of the language, who will be more than happy to help you! As a bridge to learning the language that you wish to learn, you can also try to learn Esperanto first, which you can practise in your home country and it can help you get used to the feeling of speaking another language, without worrying about complicated grammar and vocabulary, or being intimidated by the thought of speaking with natives.

In the country

By far, the most important advice I have given this summer (and the “secret” of how I can actually learn languages) is to not speak English. Please don’t take this lightly. Depending on how serious you are about reaching the best level you can, this decision can make all of the difference. It is extremely hard because it can be very lonely and frustrating not being able to communicate all that you want when there may be so many other expats around ready to chat with you in your native-tongue, but I have to warn you that frankly I’ve met hundreds of aspiring learners who have failed in making much progress because of using English as the language that they socialise in. Lots of people learn languages very well while also speaking English in their spare time, but in my experience they do it much slower than those who are 100% dedicated.

This is why I can learn languages so quickly, and has nothing to do with magical or genetic talents. Not speaking English is a decision you have to make as soon as possible if you want to learn as quickly as possible. Don’t wait until you are “ready”, because you may never consider yourself ready. Just speak! If you remember some conversational connectors you can “fake” actual conversations with natives, even in the early stages.

As you are trying to make progress in the language, to help with your longer-term goal, try to have mini-goals that you can achieve in a very short time. This improves your motivation to study and helps you progress in measurable amounts. One of them is to look forward to a particular meeting with a native and to study for that, but if you find that some natives prefer to speak to you in English, there are lots of ways to convince them to help you. But when you are socialising with them, keep in mind that you don’t need to drink to be able to speak the language.

Other observations

When learning the language with a computer handy, you can use Google Image instead of a dictionary and use Google itself to correct your grammar. Note that to be able to travel to another country, you don’t have to be rich. With my background I managed to get work as an Internet-based freelance translator, but there are plenty of ways to be able to travel continuously or fund your language learning adventure. Try not to take it too seriously and have fun with your language! (See how much fun I was having with Italian for example?)

Thanks to those of you who have followed my first experiment; in just over 3 months, this blog has reached 400 subscribers, was nominated for top language blogs and achieved an impressive 6th place and you have all joined in and contributed to the posts with an impressive 456 comments (at the time of writing). But please don’t be shy and always feel free to join in to say anything that’s on your mind after reading. I hope you will find my next experiment as interesting; I’ll introduce it in the next post (have I built up enough curiosity for it yet? )

If you have any tips to add, or if you have any topics or questions that you would really like me to write a post about in the next months then just leave a comment below (several posts this summer were inspired by comments!) Any questions about this summary or individual posts will always be welcome too!

Comments + Pingbacks + Trackbacks

Nick Kemp

I can speak fluent Japanese and now want to learn French as fast as possible. I will be going to France in June, so I have about 3 months. I think a lot of learning a language has to do with confidence and a willingness to make a lot of mistakes in order to learn.

I will not speak a word of English after 5:00pm everyday (the time I study) until I can converse in French.

Dan

Love your website and your attitude.

Some comments from me on foreign language learning:

I learned to speak fluent Japanese without every living in Japan by first studying very hard and then getting a job at a Japanese tourist company (I was living in Hawaii at the time, kind of a big advantage!)

Every day at work I spoke Japanese with co-workers and our customers. I found out what peolpe ACTUALLY say in certain situations, instead of what the text books tell you to say. Text books and classroom instruction are always way too formal, especially in Japanese. If you study Japanese through a text book or in a classroom, you'll be ready to have a conversation with the Emperor, but be totally unprepared to have a conversation with a street vendor.

So I've been studying off an on for about 20 years. I'm trying to improve my vocabulary right now. Plus I started about a year ago studying Spanish again after 3 years in high school (in which I retained about 3 phrases and 20 words of vocabulary)

So what I've learned is:

DOs:

1. Find study methods that you enjoy. If it's boring, you won't study. Do you enjoy reading grammar textbooks? I sure don't, so I gave up on those. In fact I realized that with only a short period of time each day to study I'm concentrating on using mostly audio-conversation techniques.
2. Find native speakers to practice with. In Hawaii I learned a lot through language exchange partners. I helped them with English for a 1/2 hour, they helped me with Japanese for 1/2 hour. With lots of foreign students at American universities these days it's pretty easy to find native speakers to practice with.
3. Use a multi-media approach: Watch TV shows and movies, read newspapers, listen to internet podcasts and news broadcasts, etc.
4. Study every day, if even for a few minutes.
5. When speaking with native-speaking friends, practice partners, and tutors, etc. force yourself to speak in the foreign language. It will be EXTREMELY frustrating for quite a while, especially for someone like me who likes to talk a lot, but it conditions you to think in the foreign language.
6. Check the website meetup.com and find a foreign-language group that meets in your area.

DON'Ts:

1. Take a class at a school. You'll have 20 students in the class and never learn to speak.
2. Simply go to a foreign country and expect to pick up the language by osmosis. You have to actually speak it.
3. Buy CDs with mostly native-language content, i.e. if you're a native English speaker studying Spanish don't buy CDs that instruct in English with very little Spanish content. You can already understand English, right?
4. Use flashcards or try to learn vocabulary by reading lists of words. Very boring. You'll give up. You'll remember vocabulary much better if you learn it in context.
5. Don't believe Americans who tell you things like "Japanese is impossible to learn!" or "Wow, you speak Chinese, you must be a genius!" They're really backhanded compliments, and they're just saying that they're too lazy to learn a foreign language. If you have a good attitude and enjoy learning, it won't be very hard to learn any foreign language.

Some great resources that I've "discovered:"

The Assimil language series

The Berlitz Self-Teacher series

The "Subliminal Japanese" and "Subliminal Spanish" methods for learning vocabulary. Unfortunately only available in those two languages, although lucky for me.

The "Pronounce it Perfectly in...." series.

Ganbatte!

Dan

Oh, and I wanted to add a funny story.

At first when I read your (Benny) claim that you were mistaken for a native speaker, I thought, "That's BS!, won't ever happen!"

But I just remembered when I was working in the Japanese tourist industry and one day I had a client in front of me, and I was on the phone with a vendor.

I was asking the client questions in Japanese, and then translating to the vendor, i.e. having a back and forth conversation.

The vendor says to me, "Wow, your English is really good!" I laughed so hard...I grew up in Upstate NY, so I hope that my English is good!

P Laurence

You're right about children. Adults are always afraid. Kids just don't care. I was an ESL teacher until funding went away. Have you ever tried to learn a language where you had no contact with its speakers? I'm doing that now: http://learningdutchwithgeertmak.blogspot.com Please comment.

chris

Everyone says Russian is one of the most difficult languages...maybe try that and show us how it's done!! Also your background in Czech could help:)

kendrah

If only we all had the funds to go stay in foreign countries for months at a time. we'd all be polyglots. :p

Benny the Irish polyglot

No you wouldn't. Funds don't make any difference; I know rich people who still don't travel because they invent other excuses (no time, job, etc.). I already linked to an article in this post that explains how funds don't hold you back from travel. People use money as an excuse; if you learned to spend less or change your lifestyle then you can travel - I don't have any "funds" that let me travel. Right now, I have a grand total of €150 in the bank...

If you want to speak a language very quickly, sorry but you have to go to the country! I don't think that's such a hard thing to accept. You actually save money in a lot of situations. Going to India for 2 months this year was the best financial decision I ever made for example; since English speaking countries tend to be so expensive, the south of Europe, like Spain and Italy and Eastern Europe are so much cheaper in comparison. Travel has nothing to do with being rich, it's about opening your mind to another mentality that allows you to travel.

However you can reach a good level quickly without travelling. I'm writing a post about it now, so stay tuned ;)

benny

@Kristine It would be a lot harder than you think!! I'm already forgetting a lot of my Czech and even though they are in the same language family, they are not so mutually intelligible - I met lots of Poles who couldn't understand any Czech. Nevertheless, I'll give it a try soon enough :)
@Geoff Jumping in the deeper end of language-learning first is certainly a greater challenge, but I have no doubts that you'll succeed!! :) Thanks for sharing your story! "edu" ;)
@Shane Certainly not the ideal situation, but even living with Americans, it's quite defeatist to say that it's "nearly impossible" to avoid English. You should try to branch out on your circle of friends rather than hang out with them. I'm sure they're nice and all, but you didn't come all this way to be with Americans...
I know it'll be weird, but you should all try to speak French together; surely they should want to do this too and it wouldn't be you being "stubborn and rude". I'd find it stubborn and rude if someone forced me to speak English with them all the time when they know I don't want to... At least up to a certain time - make it a game and say that after say 8pm you can relax (if you must) and speak English.
Lack of time is not unique to your situation; you have to make time ;) I wrote an article about time. You may be eating, watching TV, "chilling out" after homework etc. with your roommates, and this is frankly time being wasted that you could be spending with French people. It's hard work but you have to look at your week and analyse where all the time is going and make some sacrifices.
Good luck!

Shane

Hey Benny! thanks alot! I appreciate your advice! this helps!

Shane

Hi, I'm living in France right now (doing a master's program in language and literature), and I will be here into the end of June. Because my classmates and I have received a grant to come here our rent is free. The downside is, we're a bunch of americans living together in a university appartment. (yeah I know..smart of those who created the program) and it seems nearly impossible to avoid english. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm kind of desperate, and I feel my level of french is suffering. When I was in france last year, I lived with a host family...and it was amazing. Yet this time around, I feel like I'm getting nothing out of my stay here. On top of all this, we are given so much homework that it is sometimes hard to go out and find people to speak with,...and I don't really want to seem stubborn and rude to my roomates when they speak to me in english. Aghh help!

Geoff

Tere (Hello) Ben,

I'm an Australian living with his Estonian fiance in Estonia and have unfortunately been starting to slip into the hole of frustration and hostility that can come with living in a foreign country. A big part of this frustration I now understand comes from the isolation of not being able to easily talk with people at any time and in any way that you wish.

This I guess is how I ended up on your blog, and I'm glad that I did!

I'm currently learning Estonian as my first foreign language (which unfortunately/fortunately is one of the deeper ends of the language pool to jump into) and although I've actually been doing pretty well in learning and understanding it in class for the last month or so, I've been starting to feel pretty useless in social situations as my speaking and listening is so clunky and laborious.

One of the problems is that Estonian has enormously complicated grammar compared to English (but it's the use of genitive and partitive cases that is causing me the most frustration at the moment!), but I think after reading your blog that my biggest hurdle is in fact letting go of the metaphorical 'edge of the pool' and just trying 'to swim' in the language. As I'm sure that my fiance would also love me to become fluent in her 'emakeel' (mother tongue) and helps where she can, then I actually have a fantastic opportunity to learn the language!

Also, I really do love english and the irrational part of me is scared to leave it behind, but considering how easy it is to find english and english language culture, I really have nothing to worry about!

So my main point really is to say 'suur tänu' (lit. big thanks) for sharing your experiences and 'edu' (good luck) in all your adventures that follow!

Tervitades (Good health/goodbye when writing letters)

Geoff

Kristine

I think you'd easily learn Polish because you already know Czech. :D
.-= Kristine´s last blog ..Freelance Writing Jobs 10.28.09 =-.

benny

@Ty Good question. I'll be discussing it soon enough ;) Otherwise the first half of this article is quite relevant!

@Kritstine Thanks for sharing your positive story! I may have to get your advice whenever I take on Polish ;)

@Julius Thanks for the detailed tips!!

@Zezinho Great encouragement there! You can see that I am making good progress in my current mission despite the discouragement I got in the Lonely Planet thorntree forum :)

@Pond I hope my advice and encouragement will help you to learn Croatian!! You can give me tips when I finally get around to it later :P

Ty

That's great if you're moving to the country in which the language is spoken. What if you're still in your home country or just can't up and move (a lot of us can't)? Advice?

Kristine

Very nice read, indeed :D
I, too, was able to speak in decent Polish during my third month in Poland. I promised by friends I would be speaking Polish, and they laughed it off. By the time I left Poland, I was speaking to them in Polish, even to people who do not understand English, singing, watching movies in Polish, and even up to now that I'm not in Poland anymore, we even chat in Polish.

I guess the number one thing that helps a LOT is that YOU WANT TO LEARN Other kids, such as those Polish teenagers whom I used to teach English to, didn't want to learn. Hence, they end up only saying "What?" or "Excuse me?" when I ask them something. If you want to learn something, then it comes to you naturally - the accent, the grammar, and even the slangs.

You're right - it's easier to learn when you don't use English. And when you hear other people speaking it, in the shops, supermarkets, train stations, it helps a lot to have those words stuck in your head. In my case, all my friends were Polish, and I was the only Asian. The Turkish students, however, didn't get to learn as much Polish as me because they didn't want to learn, and they were always talking in Turkish. And me? I was always with Polish students. Some older Polish guy even told me that my Polish vocabulary is typical for a college student....

3 months of learning a language is enough, and I say this from experience. I'm happy to see that you, too, think of that ;) When you want something, nothing is impossible ;D

All the best, and na zdrowie! :)
.-= Kristine´s last blog ..Freelance Writing – Why Some People Take USD2/article Gigs =-.

Julius Beezer

Been reading your blog on language learning, and it's great! I agree very much with the thrust of your approach. In particular, you must abandon your native language, and speak only the target language, however frustrating that may be. Two years ago I decided to move to France, and while I had tourist French, I certainly couldn't hold a conversation: now I am fluent, recognisable as a foreigner, but they can't work out where I'm from, so that's pretty much good enough, though I'd like to be taken for a native.

I completely agree that the key is abandoning your native language, but that's easier said than done. My tips:

Beginning:
0) Get the best dictionary and grammar book you can afford in the native language
1) bust through the grammar book as quickly as possible: I did a chapter a night for the first fortnight.
2) get a newspaper each day, find the stories that interest you, and look up all the words you don't know, especially the VERBS.
3) book 10 - 20 hours 1 to 1 with a professional teacher and make sure they follow your agenda. Concentrate on pronounciation of the stuff you've learned from the books.
Social:
A language is only interesting if you have something to talk about. Apart from leveraging all commercial transactions to the max--shops are pretty boring places to work, especially if they're not busy--you need to find the people in the locality who share your interests. Very quickly compose your "script" of who you are, why you're here, what you're interested in, and make it as perfect as possible. Try to find the poetry of the language immediately. For me it was cycling and gardening. If you share activities, you become another member of the club, albeit a strange one. Try to excel in the activity, even if your language skills themselves are lagging.
Internet:
The internet is great for languages. Apart from online dictionaries (most useful for decoding verb conjugations), the language bar at the side of wikipedia entries gives you side by side texts on a subject in many languages. VERY useful.
Creative:
Try to get blogging in the target language as soon as possible. The act of creating a text is the best way of ensuring you have the active vocabulary you need.
Aural comprehension:
For me this was the most difficult part: I could say most things I wanted to say within a few months, and be OK 1 to 1 with a native, but it took 18 months to be able to follow a discussion among natives themselves, and I'm still not 100% even now: perhaps 80 - 90%. Listening to the radio is good. Also, YouTube is great, because you can rewind tricky bits over and over again. Shortening this any further would probably involve sticking microphones under peoples' noses, which I seriously thought about, but didn't do. I don't think there are any shortcuts here actually, and if you can get to this point in three months I think you must be described as talented.
In fact, that's my one beef with your site: any language is infinite in possibility, so this "three months" label is somewhat misleading. Even native speakers will still be deepening their knowledge and appreciation of their language, and will not be considered "masters" of it until well into adult life, having read the great authors, and demonstrated that they are fit porters of their culture to future generations.
At which point it is perhaps useful to consider why there are languages, why they have properties that make it possible to detect foreigners, and why bad language teaching is an essential part of the armoury of any modern state.
.-= Julius Beezer´s last blog ..Une visite chez mes confrères cyclistes =-.

Zezinho da Rocinha

Benny, I admire what you are doing..great for you..keep advancing yourself and reach for the stars..I see you post on other forums and idiots question what you do? I think it is great to learn many languages and cultures!

I live in a favela and was born and raise there and all my life I receive negative from people questioning me having my own small business. Keep going and do NOT let negative people stand in your way!

Zezinho

Pond Jumpers:Croatia

Great advice Benny! Trying to learn Croatian is kicking my butt. I really need to throw myself into it more. Thanks for the inspiration.
.-= Pond Jumpers:Croatia´s last blog ..learning about the siege on Sarajevo =-.

Ekaterina

Interesting point about grammar Benny!
Coming from Russia (where the accent when one learns a foreign language is on grammar) it's what I am used to. I really need to study the rules first and build some knowledge before I feel comfortable to start speaking.
But, I think that the main point in learning a foreign languae is indeed passion. One has to fall in love with the language (or foreign culture) to really feel motivated.
It's how I fell in love with the French language.
I wrote about this experience on my blog some time ago:
http://robbiewilliamsandme.blogspot.com/2008/04...
.-= Ekaterina´s last blog ..Friends when you travel. How to make new ones? =-.

benny

Thanks again for your comment Katia! Unfortunately, a lot of countries focus on teaching grammar rather than teaching speaking (although I hear this is not the case in Scandinavia for example, but I'm not sure about it). My unstructured stumbles through a language until I naturally and quickly end up at fluency has been disagreeable for some learners and teachers passionate about the traditional approach, since they may believe that you should only speak a language when you feel ready. I'm hoping to show through open experiments on this blog that this is not necessarily true.
Lucky for me I have learned not to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed, so I will gladly make thousands of mistakes within a very short time and not feel any worse off from it :P
Your story was very interesting! I'll be sharing reasons why I chose particular languages soon enough (especially for the next mission).

Genevieve

... And if it is not the case in Scandinavia, the Scandinavians have certainly got it right seeing as 83% of Danes and 85% of Swedes speak English! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language) ... Benny, I have been following your weblog from the VERY beginning and I take my hat off to you! I really do! However, I have a question for you. In a few of your weblog posts, you have linked certain words eg. 'Esperanto' to Wikipedia articles for their definitions. At university, we are swayed from Wikipedia for reasons of reliability etc. Why do you use Wikipedia for a language learning weblog?

benny

Thanks so much Genevieve! Your comments have been very welcome from the very beginning ;) Hopefully the next mission will be as hat-off-worthy! :P
You are right that Wikipedia cannot always be trusted as the best source of information, and should definitely not be used in academic circles and each article should be taken with a dash of scepticism.
However, this blog not a professional presentation, so Wikipedia is the most appropriate source for me to be able to give people a summary of terms they may not know about. I could find more appropriate articles to link to, and sometimes do, but I'd rather focus on writing my article itself. Also, you'll see that Wikipedia articles work with the dynamic pop-up plug-in, so people can read the article without even leaving my site or opening a new window/tab! :)

Quirky Nomad

Benny, thank you for all the amazing tips, and, most importantly, for all the encouragement you're giving to aspiring polyglots like me! This is the motivation I needed to keep studying Hungarian!
.-= Quirky Nomad´s last blog ..18th Budapest International Wine Festival =-.

balint

Quirky Nomad: if you'd like any help with your Hungarian, I'm more than happy to help ;) just drop me a line :)

Quirky Nomad

Thanks, Balint! I might take you up on that. I need all the help I can get with my Hungarian! :)
.-= Quirky Nomad´s last blog ..My Appearance on TV =-.

benny

@Albert Unless my travel stops abruptly in the next year or two I will definitely be taking on Russian; this is a language that I keep coming across and ultimately wish to speak fluently, but I only make solid plans for upcoming months. I wish you the best of luck in reaching fluency in it!! :)
@Balint
I agree with lingvoj - you need to be open to expanding your English and your Spanish. The biggest problem I see with people who will never improve (and please don't think this may be you, but is an example) is that they absolutely refuse to accept criticism.
If you make it clear to native English and Spanish speakers that you want to perfect your level, then a lot of those who really like the language will be glad to help you (a lot of people feel embarrassed to point out other people's slip-ups). It takes a huge amount of effort to swallow your pride and accept as much criticism as possible, but this is what I do in all of my languages; as long as it is a native correcting me and they do it in a helpful tone, I refuse to let myself get angry or frustrated. A lot of people I've met feel that once they've reached a certain level, although in theory they would like to improve, in practise they are too proud to accept criticism.
Your English is excellent; I don't remember any mistakes in your other comments, but if I re-read what you've just said I can say that for example "error" is used in English only for formal mistakes, usually associated with machines and computers, whereas "mistake" is the word we think of in standard contexts, although there are other words you can use depending on the specific context (I've got a whole post planned in a few weeks about formal vs informal words like this). I don't plan on correcting my commenters English mistakes in general as a rule because this may come across as arrogant to others reading it, but if you think of how you feel when corrected publicly like this and see if you could take it more regularly with natives in person, then there is nothing stopping you from truly perfecting any language you wish to learn :)

balint

Thanks for the opinion :D
That's totally true what you write here, and I think the right way is to expose myself to as much native input as I can (just like lingvoj said). And of course the right attitude. That's what I picked up here - from your enthusiastic posts. :D

Thanks again!

lingvoj

balint, just my two cents:
IMHO if you continue to be exposed to the language the mistakes will go away quickly. To me fossilization has to do little with speaking but to the the degree of 'openess' you have towards the language and its people.

Actually when I speak I give little regard to grammar accuracy, since my main goal is communication, the more I communicate, the more people wil communicate with me, and through the messages I receive from native speakers my grammar errors get reduced without me even noticing.

But, let's way for Benny's response, he may have a better explanation.
.-= lingvoj´s last blog ..Input and Output =-.

balint

Great summary Benny! Looking forward to the next project! :D

Just a question, about speaking as much as possible: what is your opinion about that if you start speaking too early (say, from day 4) you will definitely use incorrect language with a lot of grammatical mistakes - and if you keep using this bad language it will ingrain. And they say that changing bad habits is much more difficult than learning the correct stuff in the first place (even if it is a bit slower).

I'm just asking that because I find that my English has errors and it is really hard to get rid of them (I should have learned correct stuff and then I wouldn't have this problem now). I don't want to make the same mistake at Spanish :D

Albert

Hi Benny. You are amazing, and a lot of your blog posts have helped me and motivated me to continue in my language learning experience.

How do you feel about doing 3 months of Russian? I hear thats the next up and coming language. At the moment, its my personal target language I am learning.

Since you know a bit a of Czech, I sure that would help you greatly with the language.

Glavkos

Hi Benny , i am very glad to see you very energetic and full of enthusiasm after all....But as i have told before maybe it is easy to operate this 3 months fluency project in Europe and among latin languages or Esperanto wich is also Eurocentric ....But what if you try something completely different . Let s say Greek or Arabic or Chinese Mandarin or the Persian Farsi , or Albanian after all (where the social standards are completely different ) ....would you still say that 3 months are enough?

benny

3 months is definitely enough; the real question is, is it enough for the person trying. There is an ideal way to learn languages (that suits me, and that others may benefit from) and I'm going to discover that. I will try non-European languages soon enough. I don't know any Greek, but I would consider it also to be "Eurocentric", even if it's further away from languages I may have learned up to now. I had no problem applying this method to Czech, and it is not a Latin language or Esperanto.
My next experiment is nothing like this summer's 3-month fluency experiment. You'll see what I mean in a few days, and I'd be curious to hear all thoughts on it.
As I said in the post about stopping at 2-months with Czech, it is important that I have a personal investment in learning the language, so randomly studying Persian Farsi or Greek without good motivation is not something I plan to do at the moment. If I decide to learn those languages it will be because they mean something to me, and my language and cultural needs will change over time. My ultimate goal isn't to speak the largest number of languages possible, but I'll continue these experiments for as long as I have the patience to do it! :)

ppminhphung

Hey guy, I love your learning method, it's extremely effective, imo. But I found something wrong with this. If you don't learn grammar at first, how can you know the meaning of the sentences. Other people, those who ignore grammar, said they will use dictionary for example sentences, do you use this method?
And another thing is that whether I could master Japanese if I use your method and stay away from Japanese people, I live in Vietnam, and there's no Japanese here!
.-= ppminhphung´s last blog ..The Role of Music in Education =-.

benny

Very good point - I certainly don't go around with a dictionary, and I hope I haven't given that impression! Grammar is extremely important, but in the early stages I recommend focussing your efforts on vocabulary and phrases. After a few weeks of intensive study of vocab then grammar is much more interesting as it becomes the glue that binds your language together. Glue is useless if you have nothing to stick together with it...
I understand that a lot of people will disagree with me here, which is fair enough. I'm not disputing grammar's importance, just its priority in the very early stages. After several learning attempts, I have found that this approach works really well for me. Believe it or not I love grammar! I'm a mathematician and engineer at heart, so I like how the rules can be so logical. But focussing too much on it too early may not be so helpful.
Yes, this method presumes that you can spend 2 months in the country, although I have discussed ways of practising it without travelling in some of the links above.

lyzazel

Well, there is a school (led by Steve Kaufmann, I imagine) which says "ignore grammar at all - you'll internalize it".

I think you should do grammar at the beginning but not from traditional grammar books because they are boring. Try to find something better.

If there is absolutely nothing out there... I'd say, go on and do the grammar books while trying to use the language as much as possible at the same time.

I guess it can be motivating in itself because if you are doing boring grammar books you are very eager to go on and practice the language so that you could learn more of it so that you could quit the books. :>

Still, I guess the most important thing to learn a language is: don't read advice on the Internet...
.-= lyzazel´s last blog ..The Basics of a Language =-.

Glavkos

...but you still give advices on the Internet....

lingovj

Thanks benny, already looking forward to your next challenge, I goe it's something exotic.

lingvoj
.-= lingovj´s last blog ..On Listening =-.

benny

Dankon "lingvoj" :)
It is indeed "exotic"!! To be revealed later this week...

Caron Margarete

Benny, you've got to be proud of yourself even if you didn't make the fluency finish line. What you're putting out there is the passion and drive and then demonstrating that it's possible. Not mean feat.

I can understand completely that immersing yourself is the difference. I tried to learn Mandarin while I'm living here in China and found the impossibilities were directly related to the fact that here I'm an English teacher, an English magazine journalist and my Chinese friends all want to speak English that simply finding an opportunity to speak Chinese is super challenging.

I believe that if you truly want to learn a language, everything else comes second. Looking forward to the stories of your next language!
.-= Caron Margarete´s last blog ..The Personal Branding Series! Part 4b: What’s Left to Take Stock of? =-.

benny

Thanks for your encouragement and positivity Caron!! :)
I can totally relate to how you feel; as I mentioned in the link about not speaking English, I lived in Spain for 6 months, with only English speaking friends, as an English teacher and with almost zero Spanish. It's a really hard decision to try to start mingling in non-English speaking crowds!! They say that you can't learn a language after a certain age, but I honestly believe that it comes from confidence; children aren't afraid to make mistakes, but adults are too comfortable in their current social circle, which may not encourage non-English communication. But you can certainly make it possible!! I was a hopeless case with languages when I first started travelling, so if I can do it, anyone can!
Thanks again for your twitter @replies!! :)