Learn Any Language

Learn Any Language — the general accelerated-language-learning silo. Method, principles, and cross-language spokes.

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

    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…

  • How Long Does It Take to Learn a Language?

    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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    What is a Language Parent?

    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…