How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months | Hacker News Reader

How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months

fourhourworkweek.com

37 pointsfogus42 comments

What a crock. The first sentence:

Principles of cognitive neuroscience and time management can be applied to attain conversational fluency (here defined as 95%+ comprehension and 100% expressive abilities) in 1-3 months.

(a) is bullshit; (b) isn't even given an attempt at substantiation; (c) is barely connected to the gobbledygook of the rest of the post.

After such a disappointing article like this I feel a bit stupid that I've just ordered his book (four hour work week) two days ago.

I found the book worth the time. His business morals aren't quite what I would strive to emulate, but it's a quick read and there's some interesting stuff in terms of time & money management.

A more apt title might be 'How to Learn Enough Japanese to get the Basic Gist of a Martial Arts Book in 90 Days'

This article is all kinds of wrong. You don't learn language by making lists of words. Think of a word like 'but'. In Japanese, there could be 5 different words that 'translate' into 'but'. But you can also use tone of voice or draw out the end of a sentence to convey the meaning of 'but'. In other contexts, you might not want to say 'but' at all.

This all boils down to the author's definition of 'learn' and indeed 'knowing'. If after 90 days, the author is able to say that he 'knows' Japanese, then his bar for 'knowing' is a lot lower than mine.

Or move to a country where said language is spoken for 3 months ...

I know many, many people who have lived in Japan for 3+ years who struggle at basic conversations, to say nothing of common goals like being able to read a newspaper, function in an office environment, or achieve fluency.

(Cards on the table: I think "fluency" is a poor goal because it is confoundingly difficult to measure. I tend to advice folks to phrase goals for language learning in terms of tasks they cannot currently accomplish which they wish to be able to accomplish in the future. "Am I fluent?" is hard to answer, "Did I understand the Deployment Instructions well enough to actually boot the server?" is easy.)

I think Japanese is a bad example.

If you spoke English and moved to Spain for three months, and you spent an hour or more a day actively attempting to learn the language, you would catch on very quickly.

These things assume that language learning abilities are roughly universal, and that languages within the same vague groups are roughly as hard as one-another.

German, for instance, turns out to be a lot harder than Spanish, which I'd learned when I was younger. I've been in Germany for 7.5 years, have had girlfriends I only spoke German to, speak German with most of my friends ... and I still struggle with getting the grammar right.

Once again I find Tim's take on things horribly over-simplifying. It seems that he makes rather audacious points by redefining words (e.g. "work", "fluency") and then drawing a bunch of conclusions based on those redefinitions.

I agree on the "language learning abilities" comment. For some people, learning a second (or more) language is easy; for others it's hard.

> German, for instance, turns out to be a lot harder than Spanish, which I'd learned when I was younger

I'd guess it's the "learned when I was younger" part that made the difference.

I studied German when I was younger (middle school/high school), and Italian a bit later (college), and Italian is definitely easier (though no language is easy).

The difference was Spanish at 14, German at 21. From a language learning perspective 14 is already past the age where there's much innate.

Spanish is the bad example. All the western European languages are heavily co-evolved and share roots.

I think that's precisely his point.

That's grand, but "learn any language that has millennia of development in common with your native language in three months" doesn't have much of a ring to it.

I currently live in Barcelona. I began studying Spanish in January of this year (having never learned previously and it is my first foreign language). I spent 1 hour per day religiously practising basic Spanish until I moved here in March. From April to June (3 full months) I took Spanish lessons 4 hours per day 5 days per week. I participate in inter-cambios regularly. I have now been here for 8 months.

I would like to tell you that you are most certainly wrong. Although I can have a simple conversation in a social context I have a lot of trouble understanding the fluid discussions of native speakers. I have met many people who have moved here and are attempting to learn the language and can attest to the fact no one learns in 3 months. 12 months is closer to reality and even then the level will be extremely basic.

So, how would you grade your own Japanese ?

As I mentioned, I think proficiency is best measured by assessing what tasks you can accomplish. Empirically I'm able to convince the CEO of a multinational software company to greenlight the new product line I was proposing, which required making the technical and business case for it advancing our company objectives both orally and in writing. So I've got that going for me.

I also picked up a Japanese novel yesterday and am having quite a bit of difficulty reading a scene in which the protagonist is sparring with someone wielding an axe because my vocabulary with respect to hard bits on swords and soft bits on people is rather more limited than the book expects of me.

Consider me most impressed. How long did it take you to get to that level ?

A lifetime.

(If you think the bit about learning Japanese can be compartmentalized away from the bit about learning to persuade or learning what big megacorps value in new products, I respectfully disagree, but you'd probably find the answer "3 years college, 1 year study abroad, 3 years professional experience in (mostly) J->E IT translation, 2 years in software development/management for aforementioned megacorp" more useful.)

No, I can see clearly that that's all interrelated.

I was exactly wondering whether you just learned that language a few years ago and you'd somehow mastered it to this level in a short time or if there were some circumstances that would explain your proficiency better. It's quite rare to find anybody that spends even a moderate time in Japan to know the language at that level.

A good friend has her degree in Japanese and she would not even begin to claim that she's either fluent or comfortable in the language, and that's after 5 years of studying it intensely. To her it's a 'good basis to start learning Japanese', which she says is almost impossible outside of living in Japan for an extended period. It's against that background that I'm impressed, I know a little bit of how much effort that must have been, even if plenty of it went 'as you go' by immersion.

I think that I was looking for exactly the first two words of your reply.

My own 'second mother tongue' (English) I've been learning since I was 10 years old or so and I'm still learning, there isn't a day that I find some turn of phrase that I hadn't encountered before. I've also noticed that speaking a few languages helps to make you (much) more forgiving towards others in a foreign tongue.

Do you come across many foreigners in Japan that have your level ?

So, do you think this article would work for an American learning Japanese?

That depends very much on whether you let Tim Ferris define the word "work".

Tim Ferris is claiming that he:

1) Learned to understand

2) the oral instructions regarding

3) a single simple, limited domain

4) from a single speaker or small set of speakers

5) in a very rote, ritualized context

Back in the real world, you will frequently be called to:

1) Read, write, speak, and listen to

2) an unbounded variety of discourses (including "instructions") regarding

3) an unbounded variety of topics, many of which you have little prior interest in (such as "Compelling Reasons To Not Arrest Me")

4) from a very diverse set of speakers numbering in the millions, representing many dialects, speaking styles, social statuses, verbal ticks, and dispositions with regards to you (such as "Skeptical Small-town Policeman")

5) in a variety of contexts ranging from heavily rote conversions or ritualized interactions to extraordinarily fluid situations which you you may never encounter prior to really desperately needing to perform well in them.

Tim proudly notes that his grasp of Japanese grammar was better than that of people who had "studied for 4-5 years." I'd say the big difference was Tim was _living in Japan._

I second that, but only for countries where the language and culture are somewhat related to your own.

Two decades ago I lived in Poland for a while, and it took me significantly more than three months to get the hang of it. Compare that to Spanish, which I've never spoken, nor spent any extended time in a Spanish speaking country and yet I can read a Spanish newspaper without too much trouble, borrowing a bit here and there from French and Latin to keep going.

But when confronted with some Spanish tourist I don't stand a chance unless they slow down and are willing to use lots of finger pointing and pantomime.

I take his idea of "fluency" with a grain of salt because he hasn't actually posted any videos of him speaking the language.

Fluency is about "nativeness" (if I can create my own word here). It's being able to think in the language (rather than translating), about being able to express yourself in slang/sayings/expressions that you don't learn in textbooks, about the accent you speak in, and so on. In this respect I REALLY doubt he reached fluency.

The reason why many people fail to learn a language is because they use textbooks, which mean well, but are never enough. With Japanese, it always seems to be the same where each chapter is about: - Vocab list - A passage to read - Grammar explanation - Exercises By the time you finish the chapter you would have understood a bit. The next chapter would do the same, but without refering to EVERY SINGLE vocab you learnt in the last chapter. Repeat this process and you're upto chapter 10 but can't remember most of what you've learnt from chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7.

The reason why living in the country works best is because you're constantly surrounded by everything you're learning. The chapter isn't finished, it's constantly being rehearsed.

If you watch some of his "Random" videos with Kevin Rose (especially the ones related to their trip to China), you can hear Tim speak/use Chinese. In Episode 6, he interacts with their waitress and places a customized order.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/category/random/

I'm impressed with his Chinese speaking abilities. And I'd guess that Chinese is a more difficult spoken language than Japanese since Chinese is a tonal language.

Chinese is my first language, but I was raised in the US. I'd guess within a couple of days my pronunciation would be better than Tim's, but he probably has a better vocabulary.

This is complete rubbish. I speak a couple of languages and I seriously doubt even now I could pick up another in 3 months (unless it was very similar to one I currently know).

Searching online, I found it interesting that the author supposedly knows 6 different languages and made his fortune when he sold his completely dietary supplement company that he started during the dotcom boom.

http://www.brainquicken.com/

Typo correction: "completely dietary" -> "completely outsourced dietary"

I wonder what the author means by "learning a language". Learning to read simple documents within 3 months isn't that difficult.

Although I think everyone should keep a healthy sense of skepticism toward Tim Ferris since he is above all a brilliant self promoter, I must say I was impressed by his command of Mandarin as seen here http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/category/random/ (Not that he's saying anything especially difficult, but his tones and fluency seem very solid).

Am I wrong or does the anti-copy-and-paste on his site tell you something about his zeal to spread the word about his exciting discoveries? Bit petty isn't it?

What "anti-copy-and-paste"? I copy and pasted the text of the article into notepad without any problems. I was actually expecting problems since numbered lists frequently get mangled going from HTML to plain text, but even that didn't happen.

I don't believe it. Same goes for his 4 hours a month work out. If you are going to make claims like that at least provide details so we can try it.

Anyone have any links to develop on this idea?

http://sanbit.com/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-be-fluent-in-a-f...

The languages are different. Try to learn Tibetan, for example, or try to map Japanese writing system to English, without knowledge of how to read Japanese =)

Making and sorting lists is an essence of almost any science, so, making a list of most commonly used words, sort them and then try to memorize will lead you to know some words, but not an language.

map Japanese writing system to English

Don't do that. As a polyglot, I recommend you stop transmapping languages; instead, learn each on it's own, mapping it only to your own mental meaning. Hard to explain, but it's better to learn grammar implicitly; remember the exceptions (e.g. irregular verbs) individually and whenever you need to conjugate a new verb, go with your gut feeling and see if it's similar to one of the common rules or one of the exceptions you have learned.

For acquiring vocabulary, learn the meaning of the word (internal mental meaning) and its dictionary description in the new language. You will be using the language itself to describe its vocabulary. That way, if you forget the word, you can rewrite the phrase in your mind and expand the description in-place (e.g. "I need to call my father's brother" is still a correct sentence, even if you forget the word "uncle".)

For newbie language learners, it's the single words that are hard to remember, since they might resemble other words, while descriptive phrases are easy to remember since they're long string sequences and whence easy to match in your head.

P.S. Also, if you have a buddy who speaks English (preferably very little of it) try to troll him by generating sentences and let him correct you. It's not as tiring to him as it might seem at first, most people are amused by bad grammar and you will be a town pub favorite. Absorb all the corrections and try to use them immediately, generating other similar sentences.

I recommend you stop transmapping languages; instead, learn each on it's own, mapping it only to your own mental meaning.

Second that. I spent a year in Japan, and got to the point where I could have fairly comfortable conversations, even in both languages if you were at a party with both native speakers. What really stressed out the mental faculties was having to translate, because you had to do the whole mental re-mapping, which you didn't have to go through for a single-language conversation (or even for two separate conversations in different languages).

Thank you, sir, for this detailed reply. It's really useful, especially these parts about 'mental meaning'(each man have his own mental picture of the word dog') and about descriptions in the new language. Yes, oxford's dictionary of synonyms is enough for practicing English. And of course, personal communication is the key. But some times it is very difficult to pass trough a communication border. For example, I have many Nepali friends who speaks some subset of English (very similar to that I'm speaking) but it's impossible for me to start learning Nepali language from them, because of limitedness of our English.

> making a list of most commonly used words, sort them and then try to memorize will lead you to know some words, but not an language.

True, but prioritizing common vocabulary _as part of_ a broader system of practice will be a lot more useful when starting a new language than picking words more or less at random.

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