How then would I explain the fact that some polyglots have reached their success using seemingly very different approaches? Doesn’t this mean there exist multiple ‘best’ ways to learn languages? The fact that people take different routes to reach the same goal does not mean there is no best route. To me, this is like the story of the “blind men and the elephant“. Each blind man ‘experienced’ the elephant in a different way and made his own conclusion of what an elephant is, but this does not mean the elephant exists in different forms.

This is only an anecdote and I don’t mean to call these polyglots ‘blind’. I think we are all ‘seekers’ and they are seekers at a more advanced level. The “Elephant of language learning” is such a huge beast that even the most experienced language learners might have limited ideas of it.

The more I think about the differences of these polyglots, the more I see that they are describing the different facets of the same humongous beast. If we understand this, we won’t find any contradiction arise from the disagreement among these experts.

The advice of these polyglots of course are valuable to us. Just as the different conclusions made by the blind men help us to get to know the elephant better, these polyglots help us to understand this “Elephant of language learning” better.

There is nothing inherently wrong about people making videos on the Internet speaking multiple languages trying to help and motivate other language learners. What I observe in reality is that people, including my past-self, tend to indulge in watching these individuals, and we would be doing nothing but to watch them and talk about them online, engaging in those never-ending discussions on “what is the best way to learn languages” and  “who speaks how many languages fluently”.

In recent months, the Internet polyglots like to get together and conduct lengthy interviews and discussions together on language learning. A typical conclusion that comes out of these discussions would be: “There is just no best way. Follow your intuition and pick the best approach that suits you.” Now, thanks for the advice!

Pause for a moment and ask yourself how much time you have spent on watching and listening to all these multilingual medleys of monologues, dialogues, interviews, discussions, and hangouts. How about the time you have spent on ‘discussing’ language learning in the forums? Compare this with the amount of time you have actually spent on working on the languages. Now can you see why you are making slow progress?

Do you just want to talk about learning languages, or are you willing to put in some real effort to learn them?

It is now near the end of the year (or end of the world to some). I think it is a good time to post some updates.

Perhaps I should first explain why I have not posted for so long. There are a few reasons. Other than the usual ‘busy’ reason, for a non-natural writer like myself, I found writing posts quite time-consuming. Then I somehow found myself losing incentive of writing. I found the whole Internet language learning community gradually geared towards the worship of some ‘polyglots’. Everybody would spent a lot of time talking about these few individuals and no one would talk about language learning or their own journeys. I probably need another post on this.

As for my own journey, here are some highlights in the past 15 months or so.

Let me start from my Brazilian mission. I spent on-and-off a total of nine weeks in São Paulo last summer. It was a wonderful experience, both language-wise and culture-wise. I still miss the place and its people.

Then in September, I needed to revive my French, as my daughter was entering a French-immersion school. I was actually more nervous than her.

October was a month of French and Spanish for me. I attended a French meetup in downtown Toronto and I had a memorable evening there.

Then I declared November a Spanish month. I tried to attend one or two Spanish meetups, but the experience was not good at all.

In December, I learned that I would not be going back to Brazil anymore. At that time, I already felt my Portuguese deteriorating. So I set up a plan in attempt to keep up with the language in the coming few months.

In the first few months of this year, I found myself very much distracted by this whole polyglot phenomenon. I knew it was not doing me any good, but it was unfortunately quite addicting.

At the end of May, I spent 3 weeks in Melbourne, Australia for work. I went to a Spanish meetup. I had chance to talk to a few individuals and the experience was not bad.

In August, I and my family spent a few days in Montreal, and I had a chance (again) to put my French in real use.

My project at work started to heat up in September and I had been doing a lot of overtime since then. But then in October, I decided to start learning Russian! This was a rather shocking decision, even to myself. There is a growing Russian community in my neighbouring suburb. For a reason I would explain hopefully in a future post, I find a real need to socialize more with this community.

I spent another 2 weeks in Melbourne in November and just got back last week. Nothing much on my language learning over there except spending a night on Verbling with a Spaniard talking about the economic crisis.

I hope to post more in the future to talk about each highlight above. I know this is not the first time I said this, but I really have a lot of things I want to share.

Other than the people who know me, when I come into contact with a local, I am assumed local by default. Even after talking to me and recognize my very foreign Portuguese, they would still speak to me in Portuguese. There is simply no option to speak English. I don’t have this common problem of locals not wanting to practice their language with me. The only place I speak English is in the office and at the hotel reception (the only people in the hotels who can speak English are the receptionists).

I arrived in the city 4 weeks ago and have been staying here for 3 weeks (I went back home for a week). During this time, I was twice asked for directions and twice pulled into instant conversations on the street.

The latest incidence just happened today. I was walking down the street and a homeless dude suddenly jumped right in front of me and started scolding at me. I have seen homeless people here trying to ‘join’ conversations with the pedestrians, so it seemed something quite common. He was yelling so fast that the only word I heard him repeating was ‘Japonês’. So I told him I didn’t understand what he was saying and I am not a Japanese, but he continued. I waiting for my turn to cross the street and left him behind.

Another funny thing is that sometimes even my colleagues would speak Portuguese to me by accident. At one time, my boss dropped by with a serious look after meeting with the customer. Then he started to explain the situation to me, but in Portuguese. I gave him a blank look. Then he repeated what he said. So I gave him another longer blank look. Then he suddenly realized what he was doing.

This is partially helped by my knowledge in French and Spanish. But I believe the main reason is that before I came, I worked on reading a lot. I read Portuguese documents from work, a few short novels, as well as studied conversation transcriptions from BrazilPod. At the same time, I build my in-context vocabulary using LingQ and Anki.

Being able to understand what is written around me makes my São Paulo stay so much comfortable. I don’t have any difficulty reading street signs and warnings, getting around the city by Metro, and understanding restaurant menus. I can also understand TV programs and ads well with the help of words popping up on the screen. If I were to use the typical self-study method to learn the language before I came, namely, work on conversation practices and vocabulary lists, I would have to trade off my time working on reading, and I would not be able to read as much Portuguese as I can now.

The soonest I make myself comfortable living in a foreign place, the soonest I can gain the full potential of interacting with the locals. I am glad to find myself comfortably living in this city within the first week of arriving, thanks to the ability to understand the surroundings.

Most people in São Paulo don’t speak English, and they are not ashamed of it. There is nothing wrong with them, just the foreigners who cannot speak their language. I kind of like this attitude.

Today, my colleague back in Toronto was shocked to receive from our Brazilian client a document all written in Portuguese. It was just a set of simple instructions to access their computer network, with screenshots. I told him to use Google Translate, but he insisted on having the document translated into English.

So I relayed the request to my Brazilian colleague, who replied with frustration, “Can’t he use Google Translate?!” He added that the Brazilians have to use English inconveniently when dealing with us. Can’t we be more considerate? Besides, the two languages are not totally incomprehensible between each other.

I really felt for him. Why do so many people expect others around the world to speak English? I don’t refer to just English native speakers. Many non-English native speakers also expect other people to speak English to them.

This is only my first week in the city, and I already appreciate many locals I met here who insist on speaking to me in Portuguese, even though I am not very conversational in the language.

Most people would agree on this point. But yet some people will still think that you should try to converse in a foreign language as early as possible. What they fail to realize, I believe, is that it takes a lot of work to understand a foreign language, especially if the language remotely resembles your own.

I started learning Portuguese less than 4 months ago. Most of the work I did was input-related. I read and listened to comprehensible content. After I arrived here in São Paulo, I find that I can understand much more than if I were to split my learning between input and output.

To me, speaking to the locals is not really that difficult. The key is to understand what is said to me first. If I understand, simple responses like ‘sure’, “that’s fine”, or “I agree” are often sufficient. If I don’t understand, I become nervous. I would even stumble asking the person to repeat.

I always puzzle why some people would suggest others to engage in conversation with native speakers as early as possible. If you can understand the other person, perhaps because the target language is similar to yours, that is fine. If not, why on earth would you try to say something to someone without any hope of understanding the response. Are you trying to show off or what?

Understand first before being understood. I think the logic is as simple as that.

Back in mid-February this year when I was assigned to a Brazilian project at work, I had no prior knowledge of Portuguese and I had no intention to learn the language. I had no friends or relatives living in Brazil. I was not interested in the Brazilian culture. I was not even interested in going there.

The project plan was that if things go well, I will be on-site with the customer in June for a few weeks. Of course, there is no requirement for me to learn Portuguese. Business will be contacted in English. Documents are expected to be translated. So why would I want to learn Portuguese? I asked myself.

I believe learning a language is more than to satisfy your desire to communicate. It helps you to understand another culture. During my stay in São Paulo, rather than just being a tourist and visting tourist sites, I want to be able to figure out what is going on around me as much as possible. I want to observe how local people go about their daily lives. I believe knowing the local language to some extend will help me to accomplish this. So I decided to jump right into Portuguese.

Time-wise… I just don’t have time. I could allocate less than an hour a day on average in language learning, that is, juggling around French, Spanish, and now Portuguese. I had less than four months to learn as much Portuguese as I could before getting thrown into the environment. But then having concrete target date and environment speeds things up a lot. I didn’t waste time asking insignificant questions like “what accent should I acquire?” or “what is the different between Portuguese from Brazil and Portuguese from Portugal?”. I just jumped right into the language (picking Brazilian Portuguese and Paulistano accent). Nor would I spend time on blogging about my learning progress or methodologies I would be experimenting (I might summarize my approaches and materials in a future post though).

What is the goal of my Brazilian mission? Of course, to accomplish what I am paid to do in my job. There are language enthusiasts out there who have the luxury of staying in foreign countries for months, doing nothing else but learning the local languages. But for me, I am not paid to go to Brazil to learn a language. I have business tasks to accomplish, so I am expected to speak English during business hours. I am also advised not to go out at night for safety reasons. Hence, I won’t have a lot of off-work hours to mingle with the locals.

What is my language-related goal then? One thing for sure. I will not become fluent in Portuguese in such a short period of time. Language learning takes time (and I know the world does not want to hear this). I guess my goal is to be able to love the language and the culture of Brazil. It is also my intention to maintain and improve the language after this mission.

Oh another goal. Hopefully, I will be able to order food in Portuguese!

Sorry, wrong answer! This is not what people want to hear. Some “language learning guru” says you can do it in just a few months.

Ok, I will try again. I am not a language learning guru, but I will try to act like one.

Well, how about redefining the meaning of ‘fluency’? What is the definition of ‘fluency’ in the dictionary? Actually, I don’t care as I am going to redefine it anyway.

Let’s say, by being ‘fluent’ I want to get by and carry out the essential routines of my daily life by using the target language only. Since at the minimum I cannot survive without food. I need to interact with people in order to get food. Therefore, my own definition of fluency is “to be able to order food in a natural manner, using the language easily and accurately”.

My advice to you is therefore to get yourself a phrase book and learn how to order food. For the next 3 weeks, go out and practice ordering food from the native speakers. You may begin by buying stuff from the grocery stores, then move on to ordering food in the food courts and fast food restaurants. When you are confident, try to tackle the fancy restaurants.

Remember, gesture and other forms of non-verbal communication are also important. Make sure you use you finger correctly and point to the correct picture in the menu when ordering.

I also encourage you to go and take some official language examinations. Remember to tell other people that you ‘sit’ the exam, so you don’t necessarily need to pass it.

Who told you that you cannot speak from day 1? Of course you can! “Day 1″ is the day when you would start speaking. Preparation time does not count!

You may ask: As language enthusiasts, shouldn’t we aim for more depth in a language?

Well, if you are a language enthusiast, there are more than 6000 languages in the world waiting for you to explore. Don’t spend too much time on each one. Besides, I bet your sole intention of wanting to learn languages in such a short time is to “show off”! You just want to learn the language quickly, party with some native speakers, show it off to people around you, then forget it. You don’t really care about knowing the culture and people in depth. You just want to be a “language tourist”!

Follow my approach and become fluent in 3 weeks. In fact, you may be able to do it in just 2 weeks. But then I never guarantee your success. By the way, the title of my post was chosen arbitrarily. I don’t promise anything.

How dare you call me a fraud! Read my post carefully and don’t take things out of context! I write this post to help and encourage others. Don’t you see my good intention here?!

Some people are even taking this as a proof to proclaim that “silent period” is a waste of time. In my opinion, the experiment is more for measuring the effectiveness of “natural input” (versus “comprehensible input”) than that of the “silent period”.

I believe having an initial “silent period” is much more effective than spending time and effort speaking in the beginning stage. Before going into my arguments, let me first clear some misunderstandings of the “silent period”:

1. “Silent period” is not passive
   It is not a time in which the learner sits back, slacks off, and isolates himself from the native speakers. Instead, this is a critical moment when the learner actively absorbs sounds, vocabulary, and patterns of the new language by doing intensive input activities, such as reading, listening to the radio, watching TV in the target language, and even listening to native speakers speaking among themselves. Most parts of the input must be comprehensible, or made comprehensible by explanations (the “TV Method” does not satisfy this condition).
2. “Silent period” is not an unbreakable fixed period of time
   The length is completely arbitrary and it is up to individual learners. Some people set it to 3 months, some 6 months, and some 2000 hours. ALG sets it to 800 hours. If the learner finds he is more ready to speak than planned, he can by all means break the silence at any time.
3. One does not attain fluency at the end of the “silent period”
   No one can become fluent by working on input only. After the “silent period”, you still need to put in a lot of work on speaking and writing. Advocates of the “silent period” believe that they will play a better “catch up” and will eventually produce better results (in terms of accent and fluency).
4. “Silent period” is not anti-social
   “Silent period” does not forbid learners to interact with native speakers. It is just that you are not forced to speak their language with them. On the contrary, you should be able to understand more about their culture by spending time absorbing it from TV, radio, books, music, and other media. You are also being considerate by not torturing them with your Tarzan language (read below).

Speaking in the beginning stage is way different from speaking in the intermediate stage. In the beginning stage, you don’t even have chance to stumble or make errors. You just speak like Tarzan. At first, people might find you enthusiastic or even entertaining. When you insist on speaking like that, you will just become annoying to them. Of course they won’t say this in front of you.

Regardless of what the native speakers think of your Tarzan language, speaking too early is not effective for your own language learning. Here are the reasons:

1. There is nothing much to say
   You cannot say more than you know. At the beginning, you simply have nothing much to say. You may apply some phrases you just learned from your favourite phrasebook, but you won’t be able to understand the responses from the native speakers. So you go back and learn some more phrases, or simply move on and find other victims to practice the same phrases again.
2. The time could be well spent on absorbing the language yourself
   You may plan to extract words or phrases from the native speakers by talking to them. You would probably ask a lot of questions like “what does this mean?” or “how do you say this in your language?” I would argue that it is much more time-saving just to look them up yourself. The native speakers also deserve more respect than being treated as walking dictionaries.
3. It produces high anxiety
   Speaking in the beginning stage gives you high anxiety. According to the “affective filter” theory, this significantly hinders your learning process.
4. It could mess up your accent
   One thing I notice from Keith is that although he is still a beginner in speaking, he already has a pretty good accent (the native speaker in his second speech also noticed this). Many linguists will tell you that a good accent is hard to acquire, no matter how much time you spend on working on it. “Silent period” allows the learner to internalize the correct sounds of the language before forming habits of producing bad sounds, thus reducing the chance of fossilization.

The initial period of learning a language is crucial to you. It is the time you lay your solid foundation. Do not waste it on speaking like Tarzan and annoying innocent people. Having said that, when you are ready, make no excuse to prolong your silent period. It is easy to fall into the trap of avoiding speaking. You are often more ready than you think. Seek help and motivation on overcoming your shyness.