Nobody Knows How to Learn a Language

I'm going to skip my usual really, really, long explanation. Long story short: TFA is wrong. Many people know how to learn a language. Many people learn several languages because after learning how to learn one, they realised it's not that hard.

Main problem people have: they have unrealistic expectations. Children don't have a magic ability to learn languages. They take 10-20 years to learn up to adult level proficiency. They take 3-5 years to learn fluency up to a basic level. If you learn as fast as a child, it will take you 5 years to be able to speak like a 5 year old.

Technique is important, but it is late and I don't want to write a massive post about it (again). Here is the short version. Study every day. Don't miss a day. If you study 3 times a week, you will plateau at a very low level. If you do less than that, you won't get past baby level. You will eventually have to "study" at least 1 hour a day, but you can start with any small amount you want (even 5 minutes is enough) -- but don't skip days. If you miss a day (or several), you can't make up for it. Don't miss days.

Only study language you understand. If you can not understand a sentence at least 95%, you will have troubles (the 95% number did not come out of my ass... it is important). Always aim for 100% comprehension. Whether you study grammar explicitly or not is up to you -- do it if you enjoy it, don't if you don't. However, do not practice constructing sentences from "first principles" using grammar. This will mean that you acquire non-idiomatic language. Only use grammar to check that your grammar is correct, not to produce sentences.

In order to learn sentences, it is enough to expose yourself to them (as long as you understand them). I found it faster to memorise exemplars. YMMV. If using flash cards (with or without SRS), always practice from your native language to your target language. Never the other way around. It is important.

You must also practice forming sounds. You can "mirror" recorded audio, but sometimes it is too fast. To combat this, get recordings of songs and learn them. Try to perfect them. Record yourself and check to see how close you are.

Always try to practice with native language sources. It can be a live person, TV, radio, or written language. Reading written language is usually best for the bulk of your learning. This is because you can easily get a lot of it and you can easily go through it again and again. When reading, make sure you understand 95% (there's that number again). If you don't, find something simpler, or find out what the content means and read it again. If the latter, repeat the section every few days until it seems like your native language.

Take every opportunity to speak the language. However, beware. Most people go through a "closed period". This is a period where you can understand a lot more than you can say. Often you can't say anything. This is normal. It means you are around a 2-3 year old native level of speaking. Congratulations! Don't let it bother. Keep going and you will definitely break through it. Most failures happen because people quit (duh). Most people quit at this stage.

There is a lot more, but that's probably enough to get anyone started. Many languages share a lot of grammar and vocabulary. If your native an target language are related, you can often "learn" a language (to a child level of ability) pretty quickly (say a year or two). If you are choosing a very different language, it will take you longer (3-5 years). No matter which you choose, you won't get adult level of fluency and proficiency in less that 5-10 years. Anybody telling you differently is selling you something that doesn't exist. Languages are huge -- you have to be in to for the long haul.

Based on author's name it seems we came from the same country.

I used "came" and not "come" since it just feels more appropriate considering it's two different countries countries now.

I don't think I've ever heard about "split infinitive" before.

Perhaps I did - and it's just that the "school way" of learning foreign languages always confused me.

My first foreign language was German and at this point I basically can't have a conversation using it - at best I can kind of understand what someone is saying.

Though to be fair living in The Netherlands Dutch kind of highjacked it.

The way I learned English was simply pure interest. Watching Hollywood and British movies and TV series, reading computer/programming books and other "stuff on the Internet".

Teachers were equally confused by the fact I have had problems with recognizing/naming different tenses and grammar forms - and still getting it (mostly) right just by "gut feeling".

And actually I've been able to "think in English" for a long time. So long that these days I occasionally have trouble coming up with idiomatic way to say something in my native/mother tongue (Serbian).

As a non native english speaker, I don't agree that english has relaxed pronunciation rules. People have trouble understanding english coming from, say, spanish, because english has around 20 vowel sounds whereas spanish has 5. So for any spanish speaker starting to learn english, the differences between, say, cut & caught in spoken english are not evident at all. And this is going to happen to any speaker jumping to languages with more vowel sounds.

Furthermore, cantonese is a bad comparison to english because it's a tonal language; i.e. the inflection of the word changes the meaning. So on top of having to learn more or less vowel sounds, students have to struggle with a fundamentally different way to conceptualize language.

> English is everyone else's second language because pronunciation is not a big deal

That is not true. English has become the lingua franca of the day because England & America have dominated the cultural and commercial global market for centuries. The adoption of lingua francas has nothing to do with how easy it is to learn a language (after all, this is incredibly relative) and more with how international trade and history have shaped a region. For example, in the late bronze age the lingua franca was Akkadian, a semitic language that would've been pretty tough to learn for, say, indoeuropean speakers like the greeks.

Having moved to an english-speaking country because my husband is a native english speaker, I find that even with the language immersion is difficult. Unless you have a very particular hobby that allows you to connect to other people, it's difficult making friends because of the cultural differences. And even though at this point I'm so fluent in english I've written and published fiction stories in it, it's still a difference that can be felt - imagine being barely fluent or speaking barely a few words.

The first four paragraphs water down the title's claim to the more comfortably defensible: "Nobody knows how to learn a language... to native fluency without significant effort."

> I suspect the real reason people find it hard is economics. Contrary to this article, I don't think it's actually particularly valuable.

Yes, most times you don't really need to know a language. In the old times in europe, many village people never left their home village. As long as you can understand everyone in your village, everything is fine. Traders, priests etc had to learn multiple languages and often used latin as lingua franca.

Nowadays, in the western world, knowing english is often enough to communicate with most people you have to do in various areas of your life.

The exception confirms the rule: sometimes, languages are useful for jobs. In the CIA for example, they actually do encourage employees to learn languages. Because knowing the language of the country your work is about is actually helpful.