Learn A Language in 90 Days
zenhabits.net
zenhabits.net
> Once you know the techniques, you’ll be able to apply the same grammatical patterns and language techniques in every new language you learn.
Only to new languages in the same family.
> It’s for this reason that, while Italian took me 3 or so months to master, Spanish took only 2 months and Portuguese took just a few weeks.
That will mostly be because Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are in a lot of ways quite similar. My Spanish friends understand Italian and vice versa, without having been educated in it. Being romance languages, they fit in the same family as French (which you'll also be able to learn quite easily now, although there's a bigger difference than between Italian/Spanish/Portuguese) - they all stem from Latin. For example Dutch, English and German are all part of the Germanic family of languages and once you know one, the others will be much easier, too.
The problem will be learning outside of families you know. For example the Finno-Ugric family (Finnish, Estonian, et al) will be very hard to learn since you won't be able to relate any of the words to stuff you already know, and the grammar is completely different. Knowing more languages won't help you, although knowing German might help you a little bit for Estonian if you're good at pattern-recognition.
Source: I know 4 languages from the Germanic and Romance families and am learning Estonian.
As for the author, let him teach others to master Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish, and Chinese with the same accelerating rhythm as with he achieved in learning Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
Edit: Add to the list Arabic, Armenian, Farsi, Hebrew, Indonesian, Mongolian, Navajo, Siamese, Tamil, Vietnamese, and any other independent/unrelated languages.
Well, i learned english by watching tv shows and movies with subtitles. My english still sux, but im able to speak with people and get the job done, also i can read and understand almost perfectly, but my grammar is pretty bad ... I still feel unconfortably to speak when its not with friends or family, but, i dont let it get in the way, of course some times i look like a fool, but i think everyone does when they ar learning a new language and it is part of the process of learning. You just need to practice and dont be affraid of fail.