Everyone can learn a language

“Ah,  Ramses is so smart! He speaks Spanish so well and he only studied it for one and a half years!” That’s what some of my latina friends normally say. When I explain my method (which I didn’t even invent) to someone they’re like: “Yo dude, that’s freakin’ cool! You must be some zen-master in order to get yourself to work.”

Errr, what work? I watch series and listen music for crying out loud! The only thing you could call work is adding sentences and doing reps, but even that is pretty sweet most of the time (at least, that’s what I think). So, does it have to do something with intelligence (“He’s so smart!“)? I highly doubt it.

Frankly, I sucked at school. All I did in primary school was reading in Dutch and sometimes in English. That gave me a good foundation in those languages, but I didn’t like math and only did my language exercises because they were compulsory (math as well, but I just didn’t do them). High school? Even worse, but I had a good time. The school’s fault? I don’t know, but some say the system sucks (I agree to some point; most language instruction in school is really, really bad and only centered around testing).

Anyway, this way I ended in some pre-college program they have in the Netherlands. I wanted to do something with IT, and I it turned out that I didn’t even suck at it! The fact was, however, that I wanted to work with people and do something that lasts. So three years later (no, not a complete waste of time. I learned quite some things about people over there) I actually went to college to major Spanish. And there the sucking started all over again.

Before I enrolled into the Spanish teacher program I asked my student counsellor if it was doable. “Oh sure, no problem!” she said. Well, there was one problem: EVERYTHING was in Spanish. The teacher subjects? Guess what: our Spanish professor was lecturing it so there went the Dutch; out of the window. Man, I had a headache each and every day of the week for the first 3 – 4 weeks. I felt stupid: the Spanish people were talking Spanish to each other every single minute of the day. If I asked something in Dutch the answer would be in Spanish. If I ordered a book for some cultural class it turned out to be in Spanish. The tests? You guess it; Spanish. It was freaking annoying and I was sucking as always, not knowing what to do. So I figured out something had to change, because otherwise I’d have a  nervous breakdown at some point. But what? Or better said: how?

I’d surf the web for hours and hours until I hit the motherlode: AllJapaneseAllTheTime.com and Antimoon.com. Whoa, the articles were refreshing and radically different than the language instructors at college. Sure, they propagated input to some extent but insisted that fluency could only be achieved by memorizing words and loose chunks of grammar. This Khatzumoto guy and the people of Antimoon were saying “screw the rules and have fun instead“. I really liked this mentality and even though I was a bit sceptical at first, I soon was impressed by what these people achieved in so little time. Things I could only dream of, so this *had*  to be better than anything I had tried so far.

About one year later I’m not fluent yet, but fluency is in sight. Some say my pronunciation is perfect, but I know it needs some tweaking (some people said they still hear a Dutch influence. At the moment this isn’t too bad but in the long run it’s disastrous; tackle that native accent!). My writing is ok, mainly because I somehow *feel*  when something sounds right and something doesn’t. I can understand movies, shows, conversations, books, newspapers, etc., etc. perfectly. Sure, sometimes I need to look up something, but even if I can’t; it doesn’t matter. Is this because I’m so smart? Bullsh*t. I’m not that smart and still I can achieve fluency.

People often whine about the fact that they don’t get enough exposure in class, that Spanish is too hard, that they’ll never have a pronunciation that’s close to that of a native, that they need to memorize so many words, that they need to cram grammar, etc., etc. Again, this is bullsh*t. Many people learned a second, third, fourth, fifth (sixth?) language without too much trouble. Just ask a random person that speaks several languages and often you’ll hear that they just spent a lot of time with the language(s). Are they that smart? Well, at least they’re smart enough to get massive input.

Some days ago I was thinking about something (people say I shouldn’t think, but oh well…) that struck me: people that lived 500 years ago and set sail to the new world didn’t have textbooks to learn the Indian languages. No, instead they spent a huge amount of time with them and eventually were able to speak their language (you know, not every Spaniard abroad was a killing-machine at that time). All they did was listening carefully, imitating and eventually speaking and conversing (and converting the indians?) with the Indians.

The whole point with this method is that you only need to immerse yourself. Sitting down with a textbook and studying all this grammar and words may feel satisfying, but it still doesn’t teach you real Spanish. Sitting down with a bunch of DVD’s and watching funny shows and movies is easy and will teach you a bunch of real, uncut, Spanish and will keep you busy for hours days. When I told this to some classmates of mine, they said it’s an approach for dumb and lazy people. Well, I am lazy and I may be stupid; but at least I speak better Spanish than they do.

So, the truth is that it’s no matter of how smart you are. Everyone can learn a language. Sit down, get input and become fluent. Really, that’s pretty much all it takes.

Tagged as: approach, intelligence, language instruction, Pronunciation