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Why impatience is a virtue and taking your time is wasting your time

February 16, 2012 | 34 comments | Category: learning languages

It’s about time I discuss one of the biggest questions I get asked by readers: What’s the rush?

Not just about my time-restricted objective, but in general – why try to learn a language so fast? Shouldn’t you take a few years to absorb it?

I’ve discussed before that my 3-month deadline is not some promise or claim, but it’s a target I aim for based on my lifestyle. I’m a traveller and tourist visa limits tend to be 3 months long. So this basically explains why, and if I have to leave the country anyway then no amount of you saying “take your time” makes much sense to me; I might as well speak the language as best as I possibly can given my time limit, as that will allow me to interact way more with the locals and have some amazing experiences with them that would have otherwise been impossible.

It’s like a foodie telling you to take your time eating your dinner even though the restaurant is about to close and you’ll get kicked out. You may as well gobble up everything since it’s good food that you’ve paid for. The doors are going to close and no amount of arguments that “savouring every bite is so wonderful” actually matters. Eat more so you’ll be less hungry. Simple as that.

But there’s another reason that I want to get into today, which is another huge motivator for me having such tight deadlines even in cases where visas are not an issue (such as when I’m in EU countries, and technically if I dealt with a bit of bureaucracy I could get around the visa issue in some countries easily enough), and that’s quite simply: I am not interested in wasting time. I’m impatient, and I see that as a good thing because it ultimately leads to much better results.

What can you do right now is what matters, not “some day”

Intentionally slow learners are obsessed with the long term and can’t do jack in the short term because of it. I prioritise the short term, and all benefits I reap will also help me in the long term (as long as I keep up the language, which I will be doing in Chinese).

A long-sighted learner is only interested in one thing: they want to be equivalent to a native. Three months or any other short period where you set yourself an ambitious goal is clearly not enough to reach native level, so they have this idea that anything else is not good enough.

Well this attitude is not good enough. It’s wasteful and impractical. Read the Rest!

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When disliking learning languages can be a really good thing

February 14, 2012 | 35 comments | Category: learning languages

It may seem like the last thing you’d expect to read on a blog that discusses language learning so much, but I don’t actually like learning languages.

It’s quite an oddity in language learning circles, because if you talk to linguists and read many other language learning blogs and forums, you can feel their passion about this learning process flow out of them. I’ve had some very interesting dialogues with and learned a lot from some of the more open minded among them.

Sadly, some others see what I’m doing (attempting to speak a language as quickly as humanly possible) as an insult. If you are passionate about languages themselves, or if you’ve personally taken your time to get where you were, you’d say that language learning should be savoured and enjoyed. Of course when you enjoy the learning process itself, someone who dislikes spending time on that is going to have a lot to say that you’ll disagree with.

But we really are talking about very different things.

Read the Rest!

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Benny’s 1 month level of Mandarin: Lantern festival interviews!

February 9, 2012 | 49 comments | Category: culture, mission

[Make sure to enable captions in either English or original traditional Chinese. If Youtube is blocked for you, you can watch the video on Youku]

Here it is! My one month point in my 3-month Mandarin mission, shared on video!

The first few seconds are me reading a prepared text off camera to practice speaking a little quicker, and then the rest of the video is saying some things that I ran by my (native) cameraman just before saying it to make sure I was pronouncing everything correctly. This is very different to the several days of preparation that went into for the first video!! And it’s way more interesting :)

Useful feedback appreciated – as you can hear, based on changes in my strategy for the last two weeks, I am saying words separately rather than syllables separately. I still speak slowly when doing it without reading, but it’s manageable enough for natives to understand me fine. Read the Rest!

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Progress report: Thoughts on one month of learning Mandarin & some FAQs

February 8, 2012 | 29 comments | Category: mission

It’s been one month (and a couple of days) since I got into Taipei with the objective to speak fluent Mandarin in 3 months. So it’s about time I gave you a status report on my progress, before I share my next Mandarin video with you on Friday tomorrow! (This photo is a teaser for that fun video!)

Since uploading the first video, I’ve gotten some great feedback (as well as some not-so-great feedback), and taking them and my own awareness of my biggest issues into account, I have changed my strategy quite a bit. It’s important to note that I am always working to improve my current level - so a typical day for me in my first week, my fifth week and my eleventh week will each be completely different!

There isn’t one way and one strategy to learn a language, but you must adapt to your needs, environment and abilities.

Toning down on tones

As you can see from that video, I was focusing a huge amount on attempting to get my tones as correct as I could, and this required serious mental power as I said each syllable. This was based on the advice from a lot of people that I should focus on tones as much as possible in the beginning. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, because all that energy on tones meant that I had no flow at all in the language.

So, my approach since then has been to learn words as best as I can, always attempting to get the tone right, but speaking quicker and sacrificing perhaps a few syllables to incorrect tones because of this. Read the Rest!

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How many words do you need to speak a language fluently?

February 6, 2012 | 38 comments | Category: learning languages

Sometimes on this blog, I like to ask really stupid questions (or make stupid statements) in the post title, and then explain how idiotic I think the question is in the first place within the actual post, and explain an alternative way of looking at it. This is one of those times!

I’ve been getting asked this and similar questions a lot lately: how many words do you need, before you speak a language “fluently”?

It’s hard for me to easily convey how idiotic I find this question, so let me attempt to do it with an analogy:

It’s like asking a composer “How many notes do you need exactly, before you have a musical masterpiece?”

How do you think a composer would answer such a question, apart from rolling his eyes and thinking “you really don’t get it, do you?”

It’s not about the number of words you know, it’s the quality of amount of words that you will be using. Read the Rest!

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Welcome to new Irish readers!

February 1, 2012 | 8 comments | Category: off topic

Quick reminder: To get frequent updates about my day-to-day progress and thoughts on learning Mandarin and life in Taiwan, make sure to like my Facebook page, or follow me on twitter or Google plus!

Today’s edition of the Irish times has printed an article about my language learning adventures, and I’ve had some requests for radio interviews on Irish stations this week. While I’m glad to usually write to an international audience, it’s great to see some interest sparked back home! So, welcome to new readers from Ireland!

If you’re wondering about a precise explanation regarding how I learn languages, and some encouragement to make it clear that it has nothing to do with natural talent, the best thing you can do is check out my TEDx talk (17 minutes long).

If you are more curious about how I’ve been travelling for so long, just keep in mind that travel is way cheaper than what you think it is! I’ve had dozens of different jobs to fund this, but at the moment earn from sales of the Speak From Day One package I created that some readers of this blog decide to get (on the link you’ll see a fun video of me speaking my best languages). You don’t have to pay me money to progress in a language though – there are so many ways to learn a language without spending a cent.

Also, for articles more relevant to Ireland, one of the most popular posts I’ve written with almost a million reads has been How to speak English like the Irish, and I’ve also written specifically about learning Irish (Gaeilge), and made a silly video about it. And the book I wrote has been translated to Irish (as well as 21 other languages) by two native speakers from the Gaeltacht and you can see the sales page written entirely in Irish here: Treoir Teanga. Last time I was home I recorded some footage of the Fleadh, since it was in my hometown Cavan! Read the Rest!

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How to read Chinese from day one: Video review of the Pleco app with OCR and handwritten recognition

January 31, 2012 | 19 comments | Category: Uncategorized

Reading the language independently is an important part of my Chinese project. However, my focus is on speaking. So until I can read a larger amount by myself, I needed a boost to allow me to use the language immediately in everyday situations like making purchases, reading signs, and understanding menus and ingredients on products.

Without being able to read, it would be tempting to retreat away from such situations until I was “ready”, and this is absolutely unacceptable if I’m to get into the flow of speaking. But there is a solution! Even a language like Chinese with a complex writing system, can be worked with if you don’t mind using a little technology!

To do that I’ve been using the Pleco app that I describe in detail, in this video:

[Sorry that it's 20 minutes long. If you are pressed for time, the coolest part (the OCR feature) starts at the 5:30 point in the video. If you are reading this from a country that blocks Youtube, check out the video on Youku instead].

For much more details about Pleco and its features, please see their website, or download the free version of the app from the iTunes or Android app store.

As I said in the video, the coolest features of the app, like the OCR option are paid. I mention some of the prices in the video (based on Android version, iPhone prices are a little different) and you can decide if it would be worth it, depending on if you’d really need the features, which you may not if you are learning the language without access to printed Chinese, or if most Chinese you read is on your computer (in that case plugins like this one are a big help).

If you are in the country however, then I do recommend you give it a try. (Note that I don’t earn any commission from Pleco, this is just an honest recommendation). Read the Rest!

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6 short videos to help you configure your very own reality distortion field

January 26, 2012 | 11 comments | Category: positive mentality

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

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

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