A faster way to start learning a language

funwithlanguages:

You can get to the point where you can express yourself in a language by learning basic grammar and just 200 words.

My test for being able to express myself is: Can I keep a diary in this language? Can I talk about what I did today and my opinions on just about any subject?

Too often, people who have been learning a language for months or even years say “no.” However, in my experience, it’s possible after learning just basic grammar and the 200 most useful words. If you wanted to go fast and learn 20 words a day (the default rate of Anki), then you could learn 200 words in a week and a half. (In my experience, learning basic grammar doesn’t take as long as learning the words, so the total time could be three weeks. However, I didn’t teach myself my first foreign language, so I can’t speak to that case – if you’re teaching yourself your first, kudos, and let me know how long the grammar takes!)

The key is that you have to learn the right 200 words. When I was teaching myself languages before, I could never find a good answer to the question: What words should I learn first? If you use Duolingo, they’ll start by teaching you words like “apple”, which aren’t very useful. I spent a lot of time writing and talking in order to determine which 200 words would let you express the most. I think I finally got it. But don’t take my word for it – see this demonstration.

I personally tested this method out with Esperanto and French and I’m now able to keep a diary in both languages, writing about anything that happened in my day and any thought that crosses my mind.

To be clear: 200 words won’t make you fluent, but they’ll allow you to express yourself, and it’s a lot easier to keep improving from there. Feel free to adapt the method based on what works for you. Here are the steps:

  1. If your language uses a non-Latin alphabet, learn the alphabet.
  2. Learn basic grammar
  3. Learn ~200 basic words
  4. Practice writing
    (This method is introvert friendly! You don’t have to talk to strangers if you don’t want to. But at this stage you can also practice by speaking, if you prefer.)

The first part of a Memrise course based on this guide is out for Spanish! I said that you can express yourself with 200 lemmas, but check out what you can do with only 28. ;) Please fill out this quick survey to let me know if you’re interested in Memrise courses and for what languages.

If you run into any difficulties or if I can help you in any way, please let me know. Also, please send me your feedback! I’d love to know if this works for you or if it doesn’t. I welcome all comments, criticism, and suggestions for improvement. And if you think this guide could help other people, please consider reblogging it. :)


Additional notes:

  1. To be able to express yourself with 200 words, you’ll need to be able to rephrase things: e.g. “you comforted me” = “you made me feel better”. Even if it’s hard for you to rephrase things this way, the 200 basic words are a great starting vocabulary list.

  2. This is the order in which I usually learn an alphabetic language: basic writing and speaking, reading, listening, advanced writing and speaking. Being able to express yourself doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately be able to listen to the language and understand it, because native speakers may speak fast and use a wider vocabulary (though hopefully they’ll slow down and simplify for you in a conversation). But it’s a lot easier to keep improving from a point where you have basic writing and speaking skills than from one where you don’t.
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