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Today I wanna talk about learning slowly, or rather why if you accept the fact that learning a language is a process that takes time, if you learn slowly, in effect you will learn more quickly. I was reminded the other day of a internet influencer by the name of Tim Ferriss, who commented some years ago that he could deconstruct any language with 10 or 12 sentences and that he could, uh Achieve fluency in record time by using this method. And of course, that's not true, and I had to … In fact, I have made a few videos where I present the counterargument to his suggestion that, uh, you can learn any language quickly by mastering, you know, 10 sentences.
The, the gist of his argument is that if you understand how pronouns and direct objects and, uh, indirect objects work, then you've got the sense of the language and you'll learn very quickly. In fact, even with very similar languages like Spanish and Portuguese, where all of those pronouns and, uh, genders, they're all essentially the same, or French for that matter, in fact, it takes a long time to get used to the other language. Uh, same with Mandarin and Cantonese. Lots of Mandarin speakers cannot speak Cantonese even though they claim to understand it.
Uh, the similarity of the structure of languages, even the similarity of the vocabulary, doesn't mean that you can pick it up in an, you know, short period of time. In fact, it takes quite a while, which is a good thing, and I'll explain why it's a good thing. Now, I have in the past never made claims that I can learn a language in three months or six months or whatever. I'm asked to estimate how long it takes to learn a language, and of course it depends on a lot of different factors. But I don't make these claims. I did make a claim, and I have on several occasions made the claim, that on LingQ I can learn 100 words a day. But this was for specific languages. So if I, for example, having learned Russian, where 50% or 60% of the
vocabulary is similar to Czech, then I can very quickly ramp up known words on LingQ because a lot of the words that show up, I don't need to look them up, and therefore they very quickly add up in my known words total if I keep reading, but I have to keep reading a lot. In some languages where there is a lot of inflection, like Turkish, and particularly if I set myself the goal of learning a lot of words, again, I can crank up my known words total quite quickly. It doesn't mean that I'm fluent in the language. It's, uh, a good base from which to start, but you still need to take the time to learn the language, and hopefully to enjoy the language. And this gets me to this next point, that there's something about slow.
You know, we live in an age where everything has to be quick. You know, about 20 years ago or so, a person named Carl Honoré wrote a book, I think called In Praise of Slow, where he presented the other argument, all of the advantages- of doing things slowly, of enjoying life, of staying in the moment. And apparently he was inspired by a certain Italian, Carlo Petrini, who wrote a book about slow food in opposition to the fast food, the McDonald's. And the, the idea is the same, that if you are taking the time to eat slowly with friends in a pleasant social environment, convivial environment, you're enjoying the food, that actual act of eating is an enjoyable activity, and why should we
be in a hurry to simply feed ourselves? And that is the way I approach language learning. I learn better if I enjoy the language. And my fondest memories in learning languages are, for example, uh, in the case of Czech, listening to this wonderful series on Český rozhlas, Tolky Cesko minulositi, about the history of Czechia, as we call it today, uh, which was part of different empires at different times in its history. Uh, it's a wonderful series, audio and text. Or for that matter, I listened to audiobooks on Polish history, Ukrainian history, and Russian history in those three different languages.
I can assure you the text and the gist was quite different depending on which language version I was listening to. But that's part of the enjoyment of learning a language. You can participate in those cultures through the language. I don't need to be in a hurry. It's our interest in the subject, our desire to eat slowly, to savor every morsel, that gets us to where we want to be, which is a solid understanding of the language. Now, of course, you can nudge yourself, as I've said before, by controlling the things that you can control. We can't really control how quickly we're gonna learn the language.
This is gonna vary depending on a number of circumstances. However, we can control how active we are. Most of our statistics at LingQ, including the coins, measure your level of activity. We can control our level of activity, and that's what's gonna get us to our goal faster. In other words, rather than fretting about how quickly can I learn this language, focus in on how much time am I willing to spend learning the language, listening, reading, speaking. By the way, YouTube is now offering an ability to follow a course of study and have your progress tracked, and you can earn rewards at the end of this process.
And so I have now made my approach to language learning available as a 10-video course where I talk about listening and reading and acquiring vocabulary and all the different things that, that affect our success in language learning. I cover them in these 10 specially selected videos, and I'm going to leave a link in the description box, uh, so that you can go there, and then you may find doing this course at YouTube quite enjoyable and hopefully beneficial. And it really doesn't matter what level you are in the language, a beginner or an intermediate or advanced, I think you'll find this an interesting experience. So the reason why I'm, I'm very much in favor of this slow approach to
learning and to learning languages is that we are bombarded by so much information today, and this is well documented, that we are less and less capable of focusing and concentrating. I can remember when I was learning Chinese, or even when I was learning French, I had no trouble reading a book. There were fewer distractions. I would totally immerse myself in what I was reading. Nowadays, it's more difficult, and apparently when every time we're distracted by, uh, email or Twitter or something, even when we come back to what
we were supposed to be focused on, there is this sort of lingering, uh, attachment to the thing that we went to look for. So it's more difficult to focus, and I think if we can train ourselves to take our time, not be impatient, not put pressure on ourselves, in the end, we will enjoy the language more, and we will get to our goal of fluency faster. There are no shortcuts. You can't just learn enough to be able to order food in a restaurant. That's not a meaningful level in a language.
You have to acquire the whole language through, uh, an enjoyable and slow engagement with the language. So in that sense, when people ask me, or even in my own case, I spend a lot of time now with Persian and Arabic, if I ask myself, "When will I get there? When will I get to the end of the, uh, of the journey?" Uh, the answer is you're there now. The journey is the reward. Enjoy learning, enjoy learning slowly, and before you know it, you will be at the level you want to be in the language you're learning.
Thank you for listening. Bye for now.
