Yearlyglot

I often see learning advice based on lists, flashcards, progress meters, etc., and it drives me crazy, because these things are encouraging bad learning habits! Always remember, it’s not a race. This is very important to keep in mind, because you can’t take your test scores with you to a conversation. You can’t show an Italian your successfully completed stack of flashcards and expect that to help you communicate. You can’t fly into Russia and show the taxi driver your progress chart. You can’t order a meal in Spain by pointing out how far back your bookmark is in the lesson book.

One week ago, after taking a brief look at Esperanto, I made the comment that it looks so easy that I could see how it’s possible to be fluent in one week, which led to my one-week Esperanto challenge. Now, one week later, how did it turn out? Am I fluent?

Okay, so what if you still don’t think it’s possible to be fluent in a new language in one year? Or, maybe you believe it’s possible, but just not possible for you. Or, maybe a year sounds fine, but you think anyone who claims to do it in two months is a pure genious… or just crazy. Right?

When I started this blog, I made a point that it is important it is to have clearly defined goals by which to measure success, and then I laid out some goals for this year. As it turns out, I think those goals were a bit too easy.

When thinking about learning a new language, it’s common to think about it in terms of “what’s the word for this” and “how do I say that“, as if all that differentiated one language from another was the words they use to say things. This is a very common fallacy. It’s also wrong.
In reality, there’s much more involved. It’s not just knowing the words, but also knowing how they are pronounced. How they sound. How they are combined. Grammar. Usage. Implications. Subtleties.

I’ve chosen to learn to speak Italian fluently this year, but I have yet to complete the most important step I’ll perform this year. There are a lot of important steps involved in becoming fluent in a new language: learning vocabulary, figuring out those strange new grammatical constructs, opening your ears to hear the language,… continue reading