{"id":24231,"date":"2014-03-13T11:04:04","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T15:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nomadicmatt.com\/?p=24231"},"modified":"2024-08-07T02:58:39","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T06:58:39","slug":"four-step-language-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nomadicmatt.com\/travel-blogs\/four-step-language-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Learn the Basics of Any Language in Four Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Two<\/p>\n

I’ve always been bad at languages. I barely made it through high school Spanish and have forgotten all the French I hired a tutor to teach me. I’m cursed. Or so I thought until I became friends with Benny Lewis from Fluent in 3 Months<\/a>. Benny has mastered a method for learning languages that has helped me break languages down into smaller, more easily learnable parts. With his help, I’ve remembered a lot of my Spanish, learned Thai, and picked up some Swedish.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, I turn the blog over to Benny (who just published a book on language learning<\/a>) to share how you can learn the basics of any language for your next trip. Knowing just a few basic phrases goes a long way when you travel and puts you in the good graces of the locals.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is Benny:<\/em><\/p>\n

Way too often, we arrive in a country and think to ourselves, \u201cMan, I wish I took some time to learn the basics of this language before I got here!\u201d Or maybe you think anything less than mastering the language is not useful enough to invest time in. But even if you only have a month or a week before your trip, or even if you fly out tomorrow, you still have time to learn some basics of the local language. You only need a short period of time to master a few key words and phrases. And no, you don\u2019t need to be a language genius to pick up the basics fast.<\/p>\n

I spoke only English until I was 21. I nearly failed German in school, and I lived in Spain for six months without being able to learn the language \u2014 because I was doing it wrong. Fast forward to now: I speak around a dozen languages and counting, and it\u2019s because I make my study hours work for me, practice speaking the language right away, and don\u2019t waste my time studying what I won\u2019t need. Even with just the basics in a language, I\u2019ve had amazing experiences, like receiving my Chinese name on a train in the middle of China<\/a>…just because I understood the question, \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are four steps to basic fluency:<\/p>\n

Step 1: Be specific with your goals<\/h3>\n

\"Benny
\nA huge mistake many people make is trying to take on too much at once. Having high goals and wanting to become fluent in a language, or even mastering it someday, is a noble goal, but this isn’t going to help you right now<\/em> with your looming travel plans.<\/p>\n

To be successful in learning what you need for your trip, you need as much specificity as possible. I\u2019m lucky enough to typically have three whole months before a trip, in which I can devote most of my days to learning a language, and that makes fluency a realistic target.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had tighter deadlines, though, and was still able to work with them. Hell, even when I had one single hour <\/i>of time before my trip to Poland, since I needed to prepare for my TEDx talk on language learning<\/a> in Warsaw<\/a> in English, I still took that time to learn enough basic Polish to be able to stretch it into a half-hour Skype call<\/a> (constantly looking up words to keep the basic chat alive).<\/p>\n

The way you do this is to know precisely what you need to learn and to learn only that.<\/p>\n

In your mini-project:<\/p>\n