Who can learn what

Most people can learn most languages if they work with a

sensible method for a reasonable period regularly.
Although it is true that some people are really bad at
learning languages, there are very few of these. Rather,
there are many people who were discouraged by bad
experiences in school and who believe that if they dont
speak french or german with any fluency after having
spent 10 years in school studying it, this is because they
are not gifted. It is my strong opinion that most people
can learn foreign languages if they do it the right way.
Actually, everybody, gifted or not, with a good or bad
memory, learns his mother tongue effortlessly. Of course
adult learn differently (and a lot more quickly) than
children, but the point is that it does not take special skills
to be an efficient language learner, just an efficient
method.

Time needed and difficulty

There are certainly difficult languages and easy languages.
But I have never heard of a language which was
impossible to learn. The difference is the time it takes and
the dedication you need to "finish" the language. The
easiest languages are those closest to your mother tongue
or to another language you already speak. You can look at
mylanguage families for the learner graphs as a quick
guide to the closest languages to yours, or visit
the choosing your language section. Learning a language
with more than 80% of "common" words with your mother
tongue can be done in three months part time if you're
efficient, 6 months as a maximum. Other, more remote
language or with more inner complexity can take you 2 to
3 years to reach a reasonable fluency. Anyway, one thing
is certain : people learning on their own will learn much
more quickly than people taking classes or attending
school.

What you can achieve

Most people can speak a language like a native if they live
in a country where they have to speak it all the time,
especially when they are young. For all the others,
learning to speak a language without accent is very
difficult, something very few achieve. But nonetheless it is
 possible to learn to speak a language with fluency, to be
able to express your thoughts with finesse and understand
all the intricacies in the speech of natives without having
to spend half your life among them. The important is to
set useful and realistic goals (the first step is to
understand and be understood) and then measure yourself
against them to know where you stand. The difference
between the mediocre and the oustanding language
learner is not so much in the time you need rather in
where you decide to stop. You should realize that you will
never stop learning a particular language and that there
will nearly always be room for improvement in your
skills. Decide to improve your language skills everytime
you can and never be satisfied with approximate but
sufficient skills ! The idea is not to work constantly (you
have better things to do) in order to pass, one day, for a
native. Rather, it is an open attitude toward learning, a
realization that even if you speak really well, you could
improve it, learn new words or new expressions or perfect
your pronunciation. Aim for excellence, and you'll get it.

Summary :

Most people can learn languages if they study the right

way
Having been bad at languages in school means nothing (I
was bad too)
You should never be satisfied with your foreign language
skills and constantly try to improve them

Maybe seeing how not to learn a language it can help us to

see more clearly. Here are 3common heresies about language
learning :

The hair shirt way of language learning : Monks of

some orders use hair shirt, a shirt with something inside
that itches their skin. They wear it all day long, don't ask
me why. Some people seem to think that language
learning, like a hair shirt, must be painful to work. That's
not true. You'll learn a language much more efficiently with
a Peruvian girl friend than with several years of grammar
at school.
 The phonebook approach to vocabulary learning :
Vocabulary, beyond the first 100 words, is best learned in
context. Ask what the word means. Look it up in the
dictionary when reading. Try to guess its meaning. But
some people will tell you to learn huge word lists. That
would be nice to learn all the necessary words like this,
wouldn't it ? Yes, but it doesn't work. You won't be able to
use words you learned in lists, they will never come to
your mind quickly enough. All you can do with them is to
get good marks.
The physicist way to grammar : Ask a six year old to
explain you verb conjugation and he will stare at you like if
you were Freddy Kruger. But the same boy will tell you he
eatsand never he eat. Grammar is best learned by seeing
examples and imitating (infering the rule) until your ear
recognize what sounds right and what does not. Wouldn't
it be nice to be able to learn the grammar book by heart,
then learn a few pages from the phonebook-vocabulary
lists, and here you are, you have all you need ! It just
doesn't work that way.

FX's essential guide to learning a language

Home > Guide > Basic Guide > Basic Principles

Learning to speak, read and write a language fluently is

possible, on your own, in about one year and without much
expenses. (See my own story if you want to know more).
However, you must do it right or lose your time. Some basic
principles are fundamental if you want to do useful work, so I
advise you to read this page carefully.

In language learning there are two things you can't to without :

Willingnessto work : You have to want to learn the

language, not just wish. It's no magic power of the will,
just that you will have to stuy on your own for some
months, and everything will rest in your hands. For
example, a speaker of a romance language (french, italian,
spanish, portuguese, romanian, ...) can learn another in
less than 200 hours. Yet he has to work during these
hours, and if he's weak-willed he will probably stop after
30 hours, then go back, then stop again and never finish.
An intelligent method : Many people study a language
for years and cannot order a pizza in this language. If you
 think I exaggerate, ask someone who studied a language
at school. So the second most important thing is to work
intelligently, so you don't lose neither time nor energy. It'
written nowhere that language learning must be painful,
but it can be if you study stupidly.
FX's essential guide to learning a language
Home > Guide > Basic Guide > Where to begin
So how should you learn the language ?
First you need a good basic book, if possible with tapes. If
there is a good method for the language you want to
learn, that can spare you weeks of study. For example for
spanish there is an intelligent method that covers almost
everything you will use, and I needed nothing else. For
italian, there are very few things so you have to make it
on your own, it's longer.
Finding the right books and tapes
If there is a good method with plenty of cassettes (that
means at least 12 hours by book, with audio drills
included), you're lucky. It may be sufficient to learn a lot
and you will only have to follow, always knowing where
you are in your learning. The best I know are FSI (Foreign
Service Institute, the language teaching section of the US
Department of State). You can buy some of their products
through Audioforum, or buy directly from them. Both are
more expensive that they could be, but still well worth the
money.
If you find nothing there, you may wish to head for a tape
only course, but this implies you'll need additional material
if you wish to achieve fluency in all situations. Pimsleur is
the best there is, however it is also the most expensive.
Nevertheless if you buy them, you will be able to learn
your language while driving, and your pronunciation will be
as perfect as can be.
How you should work
There is no such thing like regular work : you can study as
little as half an hour a day, but you should not stop for
extended periods of time. Why ? Because you would lose
the thread, you wouldn't remember what you learned in
the preceding lessons sufficiently to build another layer.
Weak foundations, short buildings. The best thing would
be to work 1:00 to 1:30 a day, maybe with a short pause
in the middle.
What to do if you stop in the middle
Most people will, during the course of their study, stop for
 a few day or even a few months, for all kind of reasons.
So, if it happens to you, what should you do to begin again
? Take your book and begin at the last lesson you studied,
and from there go to the previous lesson. Look at the
material, do an exercise. If you do not master it
sufficiently, go the the lesson before and do the same self
test until you reach a lesson you master well. Then redo
completely every lesson where you failed this little test.
Again, there is no one to watch you but if you think you
can go on without knowing well every lesson you studied,
you are wrong. Better lose a few days of repetition than to
see after 2 weeks that you are not confident in your skills
and risk abandonning everything.
The 1000 most common words in italian make 85% of
normal speech. If you think you know them (a good book
will teach you these words first), then you are in
intermediate learning, topic of the next page.

What is a good first foreign language?

Home > Guide > Basic Guide > Where to begin > First language

What language should I learn first? This is a question I get

asked very often. It is an important question and it is worth
spending some time over it before you start on that language
learning journey.

As a general rule I recommend an easy and useful

language as your first foreign language.

An easy languages can be learned in under a year of

regular study. Such languages share many words with
English and do not have ghost trains of grammatical
horrors. Look at my difficulty table to get a rough
indication of language difficulties (ratings apply to a
monolingual native English speaker). You can learn an
easy language in 300 to 600 hours of work versus more
than 2000 hours for a 'hard' language.
A useful languages are much easier to learn and to
remember. Such languages include English, Spanish,
French and many others. If you stop learning
foreign languages after your first, you'll be glad to be
stuck with a useful language that will be compatible with
as many new interests you will develop in life. If you speak
only Sanskrit, you'd better like Indian classics all your life
 because there is not much else you can do with this
language. If you learn French or Spanish, you can travel to
dozens of countries, listen to songs, read books,
newspapers, watch TV and use it for business or with
friends. Such a language will serve you all your life.

Now if you have a 100 pounds brain or are consumed by an

inextinguishable passion for Sanskrit or Mongolian, go for it. We
have on the forum several people who successfully learned
difficult languages at a very young age. Maybe you will be the
next one, but keep in mind that it is easier to capitalize on the
self-confidence acquired by having successfully taught yourself
an easy language than to decide you really can't learn the
difficult language you had chosen and quietly move on to an
easier language.

Also, if you learn a first language fast and well, learning another
one becomes a very attractive thing to do. The choice you make
of studying one language versus another becomes just a matter
of when you learn it. But if you choose a hard language as your
first foreign language and fail, you run a high risk of becoming
discouraged and losing all hope of ever learning a foreign
languages.

Sure, teenagers just love the idea of studying an obscure

language, but most of those who start on such a language
quietly stop after a few months and are never heard from again.

When you start your foreign language learning 'career', you

can't know with absolute certainty how efficient a learner you
will be. How much time and attention you can consistently
devote to the language.

Make sure you choose a language on which you can realistically

spend the necessary hours to learn it.

FX's essential guide to learning a language

Home > Guide > Basic Guide > Intermediate Learning

Once you've started learning your language and you've

mastered the basic structures and at least 1000 words, you can
begin to read. Indeed, you must read, and read authentic
material, not texts you find in your textbook. Reading will
challenge your knowledge, increase your vocabulary and make
you want to learn more. And you'll know precisely where you
are in the learning of this language, at least from the passive
side (reading/understanding).

Finding something to read or listen to

Once you're started in the language, you need some

stimulation, that is, you need to create some situations in which
you want to use the language. It's easy for many language. Buy
books, read newspapers, watch TV, go to the movies, listen to
the radio, all of this in your foreign language. If you can, try to
meet people from the target country. Well, as most readers of
the internet now are Americans, and most Americans want to
learn spanish, let's assume you want to learn spanish. There are
so many resources in spanish that your problem becomes one of
choice. And the mere fact that you read this is proof that you
have some basic knowledge of the internet. Did you know that
you can listen to Colombian and Paraguayan radio on the
internet ?

Reading in a foreign language

So, now that you have some material in your target language,
you need the right approach. If it's written, find a part (for
example an article of El Financiero) that interests you, and
begin to read it. Everytime you find a word you don't
understand, write it down on a blank flash cardand look it up in
the dictionary. You can miss some words if there are too many
but if you look them up and don't write them, you can bet your
grandmother that the next time they show up in the text you
will have to search them again. And while you're at it, you can
bet your grandfather that they will show up again. This is a
strange law, but useful when you think about it : words you find
in an article have a tendency to be used again in the same
article, or book. And it's also true for newspapers. Once you've
looked up and written words like event, occured, investigation,
president, declared, etc... , you can read most newspaper
articles. But remember that you have to write them unless you
want to look them up every time. I can tell you as at first I did
not write them, and these words have the nasty habit of coming
to your mind after you looked them up for the second time
"Aaaah now I remember what it meant"-too late. So if already
you made the effort of looking them up, write them. And
remember to use flash cards, because they are so superior and
much more convenient to use once you started. If you make a
list you will maybe look at it a couple of times and then forget it.

Don't worry about grammar, it's not a thing to be learned

before, but after. First read a lot, and when you will hear
spanish phrases in your head under the shower, then you can
open the grammar book again and see if it's more meaningful.

At the same time you should go on with your method (books

and tapes), working regularly. Toward the end of the method,
you should be at the advanced learning stage, topic of the next
page.

FX's essential guide to learning a language

Home > Guide > Basic Guide > Advanced Learning

The 3000 most common words in italian make 95% of normal

speech. This rule is probably also valid for the language you
want to learn. Once you master these words, you have a
vocabulary that is sufficient for most general conversations. If
you also mastered all the important grammatical structures,
then you can begin advanced learning. How should you work
now ?

Read, listen to radio, watch TV. There are thousands of

resources on the internet, hundreds of magazines and
newspapers where you can see your language "live" and
confront your skills with a permanent test.

Find people you speak your language, be it trough travel,

ads, local community centers, or whatever other mean. Speak
with them, listen to what they say.

You should NOT be happy with being understood. It's easy

to be understood and you will not command respect from the
people you talk to if you speak to them in what will look to them
like baby talk. Instead, you should always try to make your
pronunciation perfect, including intonations (it's very difficult in
english, very irregular). When you make a mistake, insist to be
corrected and write the correct phrase.
How not to forget the language you learned :

You must organise your life so that chances to practice your

language come by themselves : travels, newspapers, setting
your TV on foreign channels as default, marrying a foreign wife,
etc...