How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour
Tim Ferriss wrote a post with this title ‘How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour’. If you believe him then, I have some nice swamp land in Florida to sell you. Tim, who was #1 on the New Times best sellers list who wrote an article with this title, claiming Russian, Arabic, Chinese could all be learned in an hour. Why does he write this? To teach you how to learn a language in 1 hour? No. Because he wants to help you learn a language? No. To attract attention? Yes. What if I claimed to be the reincarnation of the polygot Cardinal Mezzofanti who spoke more than 38 languages. It will attract attention, but it is not true. People will be interested in what he has to say because he made such a crazy statement. In my opinion Tim fills is own article posts with his own positve comments.
I posted a comment that I could give him ten hours to learn Polish and I would call him after ten hours, and if he understood the most basic phrase in Polish, I would be impressed. He deleted my comment. I wonder why? Because to learn a language takes patience. Everyone wants to hear they can do it in an hour. But come on. It takes longer.
Further such articles distract you and dilute your focus from learning a language. So his article ‘How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour’ will do you more harm than good. You will read it ponder it and try it, go back to it. At the end you will not get anything real from it. Your time would have been better spent learning a few new phrases or reading in your target language. Even a little disillusionment will dissipate your enthusiasm towards your real goal of learning a language.
I would recommend ‘How to learn any language’ by Barry Farber. This is real, he tells you how he learned languages with some work and a lot of fun and creativity. I would say Farber is a polyglot with who learned languages with passion, not ridiculous claims for ridiculous people. IMO Barry Farber’s book ‘How to learn any language’ is true, Tim’s ‘How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour’ is false.
However, if you really want an easy way to learn a language try learning it with music. I know many people who have learned languages this way. It is fun, still hard work, but effective because language is to some extent like music, it has a rhythm.
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