Experimenting: Learning a new language fast
At the end of next week I’ll be off for a trip around the Yukatan in Mexico. I’m of course excited about the prospect of spending time there and seeing the Mayan cultural sites, but the fact that I don’t speak Spanish makes interacting with the locals a bit of a problem. That’s why I decided 3 weeks ago that it was time to learn the language as fast as I could. Or at least as much so I could converse with people.
To give you a bit of a background I now speak 3 languages well (my native Dutch, English and German) and a little bit of French. That knowledge has helped me on earlier travels, but since I’m now going to a part of the world where Spanish is the main language I do not have a real fallback when it comes to communicating. I looked at different courses, but the traditional ones don’t offer much because even with an increased learning speed it will take you several months to learn the language.
Then I remembered reading an article by Tim Ferriss on how he learns languages quickly. As he mentions in the article it’s not so much about mastering the language but knowing enough about it to put it to good use. So I put his methods to the test to find out if it would work for me.
Pretty soon I started to understand what was being written (Engadget Espanol helped me with that one). When it comes to actually understanding to what is said (I watched some football and basketball with Spanish commentary) it’s another matter. Maybe it’s because of the difference in phonetics or the fast speed with which they speak but I was able to understand maybe 5-10% of what was being said.
Despite that fact I’m pretty impressed with how his method worked. I’m sure that if I have time to put in a little more effort to perfecting my way of working it (which sadly will be after my holiday) I’ll be able to get the hang of it. For now I’m just happy with the way I understand some thing and I’ll just ask them to slow down a bit when they go to fast. And if all else fails: a friend who will join me is an interpreter so he can do the talking for me.
Tags: Experimenting
