Author: Chris Lonsdale

  • Are You Too Old to Learn a Language? What the Data Says

    ByChris Lonsdale

    No cliff. A slope. — the study everyone cites to tell you you’re too old to learn a language, and what its own data says. Somebody told you children are sponges. That their brains are built for language and yours stopped being built for it a long time ago. Maybe you tried at school and it didn’t take. Maybe you’ve tried since. Either way you filed yourself, quietly, under not a languages person — too old to learn a language, you assumed — and you got on with your life. There is a scientific-sounding name for the thing you were told. The Critical Period Hypothesis: a window early in life when language goes in easily, and after which it doesn’t. Start really young, or don’t…

  • What’s the Best Way to Learn a Language?

    ByChris Lonsdale

    The best way to learn a language is the way your brain already learned your first one — meaning first. That means sound is tied straight to experience with no translating in between. Almost every course in the world today teaches the opposite. This is exactly why most people stall, struggle or outright fail. The short answer The best method isn’t a particular app or a magic number of minutes a day. It’s an approach to language learning itself. Learn the way a child does — understand meaning directly, soak up the sounds, then speak — rather than translating, memorising lists or drilling grammar. Get the method right and the smaller choices, like which app or how many hours, matter far less than most people…

  • The Best Duolingo Alternative for Chinese

    ByChris Lonsdale

    If you’re looking for a Duolingo alternative for Chinese, you’ve probably already felt the thing that sends most people searching: the streak is long, the owl is happy, and you still can’t say much. So let me answer the real questions honestly — is Duolingo good for Chinese, where exactly does it leave you stranded, and which of the alternatives actually fixes that. I’ll be fair to all of them, including Duolingo, because the goal here isn’t to bash an app — it’s to match you with the thing that gets you speaking. Is Duolingo Good for Chinese? The Honest Verdict Duolingo is a genuinely good piece of software, and it does several things well. It’s free, it’s beautifully made, and its real masterstroke is…

  • How Long Does It Take to Learn a Language?

    ByChris Lonsdale

    How long it takes to learn a language comes down to three things: how close it is to a language you already speak, how many hours you put in, and — most of all — your method. By the traditional translate-and-memorise approach, most adults need one to two years to hold a real conversation in an easier language. And that number is only for the very small percentage of people who push through the extreme difficulty of that 240-year-old approach. With a brain-based, meaning-first method, conversational fluency becomes a realistic six-month goal. The short answer: it depends on three things The honest answer to “how long” is “it depends” — but it depends on knowable things, not luck. The first is overlap: a language close…

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    How To Learn Any Language in Six Months

    ByChris Lonsdale

    How to Learn Any Language in Six Months – Transcript. Welcome to the Transcript page for How to Learn Any Language in Six Months. To find out how these ideas are made real, view the new Speech Genie demo course! Content reproduced here with permission. Read on!  Or scroll to the bottom for the pdf download link. Have you ever held a question in mind for so long that it becomes part of how you think? Maybe even part of who you are as a person? Well I’ve had a question in my mind for many, many years and that is: how can you speed up learning? Now, this is an interesting question because if you speed up learning you can spend less time at…

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    What is a Language Parent?

    ByChris Lonsdale

    If you’re scratching your head, wondering what on earth a language parent is, don’t worry.  You’re not alone! A language parent is someone, or a role that someone plays, that is ESSENTIAL to how you learn any language, especially if it is very different to the language that you already know like Mandarin Chinese, or Cantonese, or Japanese. A language parent is NOT a teacher. The role of a language parent is to interact with you in a normal relationship rather than to be your teacher.  What does this mean?  A language parent talks with you about the normal things that he or she is interested in, and the things that you are interested in.  The language parent spends time with you because he or she likes you and enjoys…