Pin It

Join almost 1/2 million
monthly
readers!

Contact Me

Coaching and Consultation

Current mission

Secret project in
Berlin! Subscribe to
email list to find out
about it first!

Previous post:

Next post:

Free book: The polyglot project, how to learn languages

| 34 comments | Category: learning languages

Today I’ve got an interesting treat for you all! Almost 140,000 words (534 pages) of free information about learning languages.

This project was headed by Claude Cartaginese, who gathered the advice from dozens of “youtube polyglots, hyper-polyglots, linguists, language learners and language lovers” and put them all in this one book, which is free to everyone.

The advice given in these pages is quite interesting and extremely varied!

You have everything from brief to-the-point advice, to short biographies… to long biographies, and to inspirational stories. There are lots of language learners I have been in touch with including Moses McCormick, Stujay and Anthony Lauder (all of whom also contributed to the Language Hacking Guide), as well as several others that I have talked with… and even some I’ve argued with.

Claude got in touch with me just as the project was coming to a close and I was happy to contribute my own chapter to the book. I talk about the kind of communicative advice I write in the Guide and on this blog.

I must say that I straight out disagree with some overstudy or LingQ is the best thing since sliced bread philosophies in the book, especially since some are from the “language lovers” spectrum (i.e. they don’t actually speak a foreign language fluently yet, although that’s just a couple of people out of the dozens of genuine bilinguals and polyglots), but pretty much everyone manages to add an interesting idea for ways to learn your language. There are also a lot of general alternatives to the traditional academic approach and lots of encouragement and positive attitude.

As you can see from this blog I try to get people to speak a language, and because of this focus, a lot of my advice is not echoed by those more interested in simply learning a language for the sake of it. Fortunately, quite a few do emphasise the importance of constant practice too.

If you feel your learning/studying strategy could do with some improvement, or you are interested in hearing the background of some other language learners, then you’ll likely have an interesting read in The Polyglot Project.

Free download

Claude made the 534 page PDF available and you can read that directly on my site by clicking “PDF” below. Alternatively, Right Click it and “Save As” (depending on your browser/system, control click on a Mac) to store it to read it later.

I went through the process of converting the PDF so those of you with an iPad, Sony Reader, iPod, Android etc. can read it much easier as an ePub, and those of you with an Amazon Kindle can read the Mobi. Note that some foreign symbols (like an occasional Chinese character for illustration) were lost in the conversion to ePub/Mobi.

Get these below:

PDF

ePub

Mobi

My contribution is on page 228 of the PDF or you can click my name in the ePub/Mobi table of contents.

Printed copy

The book is also available in print for those of you who prefer dead-tree-format and you can order that from Amazon. Due to printing, distribution etc. costs this is $16.95. Note that contributors don’t earn anything from Amazon sales, but thanks to the use of an Amazon affiliate link I get an entire US$0.67 per sale by purchases through the link below :P

You can check out “The Polyglot Project” on Amazon here.

————–

Have a read and let me know what you think of it! Leave your comments about it below and click here to share this free book with your friends on Facebook!

***********************

Enter your email in the top right of the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

If you enjoyed this post, you will love my TEDx talk! You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

This article was written by

Comments: If you liked this post or have anything to say, please leave a comment! I love reading them :)
Just keep in mind that I’ll delete any rude, trolling, spammy, irrelevant or way off-topic comments. If you have a general language learning question, please ask it in the forums. Otherwise please use the search tool on the right for any other question not related to this post.

———————————–

  • http://dgryski.blogspot.com Damian Gryski

    I also published my review/summary of “The Polyglot Project” on my blog: http://dgryski.blogspot.com/2010/11/polyglot-project-review.html

    • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

      Great review! Glad to see you find some common themes in various contributions :) I’m also not really too keen on reading biographies and from a purely practical standpoint don’t think these contribute to the “how to learn languages” subtitle of the book at all, but I’m sure many readers will find them interesting nonetheless.

      • http://www.google.com/profiles/medviten Victor Berrjod

        I agree. I read the first two contributions and thought “hey, this is cool!”. Then, I read further, finding biographies and such. That’s when I realized why the book had so many pages. :þ

        It’s an interesting book, even though only a small portion of it will likely be useful to me personally.

        • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

          Agreed. I had the chance to read other articles I had put aside and found them to be totally lacking in any useful information. They would perhaps inspire people, but the book really is mostly a collection of random biographies with a few entries actually giving practical advice.

  • http://www.spanish-only.com Ramses (Spanish-Only.com)

    Wow, I think this makes quite a good read, thanks for sharing Benny!

    However, if it’s true that language lovers that don’t actually speak a foreign language yet contributed to the book, I wonder how valuable those chapters will be. Sure, they can have great ideas, but if they haven’t been put to the test, you can’t be sure.

    Anyway, I’ll load the document to my ereader so that I have something to read in the train to college next week :-) .

    • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

      Yes, that’s why I had to mention it. I don’t feel this “I don’t speak yet, but I’m sure what I’m doing will work!” approach is useful to others who want practical advice. But luckily that’s just a couple of contributors. Most of them are genuine polyglots or bilinguals.

      But as you can imagine, I still disagree with their advice ;)

      Glad to see my conversion process is appreciated! Stu Jay’s contribution has some Chinese in it that I lost in the conversion (to get rid of PDF line-spacing formatting, I had to use OCR software and set it to English), but that shouldn’t disrupt most of the reading experience.

      Hopefully you’ll summarise the best and worst parts of what you got out of it on your blog ;)

  • Thepolyglotproject

    Hi Benny,
    Thanks for posting this review, and for your contribution to the book! I think that there is something for everyone within its covers, and there is nothing like it to be found elsewhere. That so many took the time to freely write about their methodologies is a testament to the character of the online language learning community.

    Best,
    Claude Cartaginese, Editor
    The Polyglot Project

    • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

      Thanks for working to put it all together Claude ;) I’m happy to spread it to everyone here!

    • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

      Thanks for working to put it all together Claude ;) I’m happy to spread it to everyone here!

  • Thepolyglotproject

    Hi Benny,
    Thanks for posting this review, and for your contribution to the book! I think that there is something for everyone within its covers, and there is nothing like it to be found elsewhere. That so many took the time to freely write about their methodologies is a testament to the character of the online language learning community.

    Best,
    Claude Cartaginese, Editor
    The Polyglot Project

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

    Tem que ler o “Language Hacking League”. Vai receber o e-mail grátis. Vou escrever lá algumas semanas antes de começar e aqui no blog no dia que começo.

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

    Yes, I always wonder why people are so sceptical about actually using their language, but time and time again I get e-mails and comments like yours proving that I’m not crazy and that this can really work for anyone ;)
    Please do comment again soon!

    • Alvin B.

      I guess for me, chatting online with someone in a foreign language is difficult because I don’t really chat in my own language anymore! I’m about fed up with learning in isolation though and am looking to trying to work in another country.

    • Alvin B.

      I guess for me, chatting online with someone in a foreign language is difficult because I don’t really chat in my own language anymore! I’m about fed up with learning in isolation though and am looking to trying to work in another country.

  • http://twitter.com/LanguageMastery Language Mastery

    We differ somewhat in our position on input and output, Benny, but I greatly enjoyed your contribution to The Polyglot Project, and think you make some excellent points.

    The following passage was particularly interesting to me:

    “Waiting until you are ready is what will forever hold millions of learners back from ever trying. You will never have enough vocabulary. Not being ready is a state of mind that you can maintain until the day you die if you choose.”

    While I do believe that it’s best, at least for MOST people, to focus first on listening and then beginning to speak a little later, you are right that many learners forever put off output, saying to themselves, “I’ll just wait a little longer until I have enough vocabulary”, forever procrastinating.

    I have also done a review of the book a few days back if you’d like to compare notes:
    http://l2mastery.com/featured-articles/the-polyglot-project-is-now-available

    • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

      Glad you enjoyed my contribution :)
      If by “most” people you mean language enthusiasts, then perhaps you’re right. But for people who genuinely need to USE their language, including millions in an immersion situation or one coming up soon, procrastinating the inevitable stage of speaking will do them no good.
      Thanks for your review!

  • http://howlearnspanish.com/ Andrew

    Sounds fantastic, I’ve downloaded it just so I’ve got a copy if I want to have a look at some point but what I’ll likely end up doing is ordering the hardcopy, those are much easier to read versus a digital copy on a computer screen, especially when you’re talking about 500-some-odd pages.

    Really looking forward to it, and many many thanks for making it available free online in a digital format–even if I buy the hardcopy later, what you did there is precisely what SHOULD be done, I just wish more publishers and artists would realize that doing that sort of thing actually results in more income for them than less.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

    • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

      Hey Andrew, didn’t you read my post about e-Ink technology and the Kindle? My Kindle is way easier to read than a computer screen and frankly it’s vastly superior to any book.

      • http://howlearnspanish.com/ Andrew

        Yes, I remember that and you’re probably right, but that would require me to purchase an e-reader which would make my bank account balance slightly smaller than it currently is :P

        • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

          So you’ll pay for books but not read them for free (as in this situation) on an e-ink display? If you do the same thing you’ve done with this book 9 times you’ve already paid for a Kindle… ;)

          • http://howlearnspanish.com/ Andrew

            I can almost guarantee you I’ll get one eventually, but right now I’m not even buying 1 book a month simply because I don’t have the time to read them, so I can’t justify the expense at the moment.

      • http://howlearnspanish.com/ Andrew

        Yes, I remember that and you’re probably right, but that would require me to purchase an e-reader which would make my bank account balance slightly smaller than it currently is :P

      • Alvin B.

        I have to justify electronics purchases, so I’ve put off a Kindle for now. I do love reading on my Samsung Vibrant, it has a very crisp large screen for a phone. That’s where I’m reading this book currently. I have held/looked at a Kindle and they look great. I just have to avoid gadget overload!

  • http://www.axisofawesomeblog.com Trever Clark

    Wow. Amazing resource. Almost wish it wasn’t quite so long so that I could print it off without running out of ink! Thanks for sharing this, Benny.

    • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

      It is quite long, but a huge amount is taken up by just a couple of entries. I think the shorter entries actually bring more value to the book and those are quite printable ;)

  • http://jennygradient.wordpress.com/ Jennysayell

    Just wanted to say thanks very much, Benny.

    Thank you for zipping the Polyglot Project and for telling us about it in the first place, as well as for your contributions to methols and for your feedback on the book. Happy Hacking! Jenny

    • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

      You’re welcome! I hope you enjoy reading it :)

  • Anonymous

    Currently, the world’s Designer   Handbags or Cheap Designer Handbags brand lot of other people’s   favorite and most stylish brands: Longchamp   bags, coach bags,Marc by Marc Jacobs, Mulberry Handbags
     and   miu miu bags and so on. Because of   their style and   color are just a favorite.

  • Anonymous

    Currently, the world’s Designer   Handbags or Cheap Designer Handbags brand lot of other people’s   favorite and most stylish brands: Longchamp   bags, coach bags,Marc by Marc Jacobs, Mulberry Handbags
     and   miu miu bags and so on. Because of   their style and   color are just a favorite.

  • Anonymous

    Currently, the world’s Designer   Handbags or Cheap Designer Handbags brand lot of other people’s   favorite and most stylish brands: Longchamp   bags, coach bags,Marc by Marc Jacobs, Mulberry Handbags
     and   miu miu bags and so on. Because of   their style and   color are just a favorite.

  • Anonymous

    Currently, the world’s Designer   Handbags or Cheap Designer Handbags brand lot of other people’s   favorite and most stylish brands: Longchamp   bags, coach bags,Marc by Marc Jacobs, Mulberry Handbags
     and   miu miu bags and so on. Because of   their style and   color are just a favorite.

  • Anonymous

    Currently, the world’s Designer   Handbags or Cheap Designer Handbags brand lot of other people’s   favorite and most stylish brands: Longchamp   bags, coach bags,Marc by Marc Jacobs, Mulberry Handbags
     and   miu miu bags and so on. Because of   their style and   color are just a favorite.

  • Anonymous

    Currently, the world’s Designer   Handbags or Cheap Designer Handbags brand lot of other people’s   favorite and most stylish brands: Longchamp   bags, coach bags,Marc by Marc Jacobs, Mulberry Handbags
     and   miu miu bags and so on. Because of   their style and   color are just a favorite.

  • Anonymous

    Currently, the world’s Designer   Handbags or Cheap Designer Handbags brand lot of other people’s   favorite and most stylish brands: Longchamp   bags, coach bags,Marc by Marc Jacobs, Mulberry Handbags
     and   miu miu bags and so on. Because of   their style and   color are just a favorite.