BootsnAll Travel Community

Finally, I've found the best way to learn a foreign language.

Step 1: Rebel and try your hardest not to learn it

Step 2: Throw your copy of Living Language out the back door
(I was so frustrated I literally did this)

Step 3: Get really Drunk

Step 4: Have someone point out to you that you've been
speaking German for the last hour and didn't know it.

Worked for me, just the other night, bizarre. I've heard of things like this happening to people but I always thought it was B.S. And people say booze is bad for you

I wonder if it works for other languages. I took a single semester of German in my last semester of college (I needed 3 free electives to graduate) and several years later I found myself in Litihoro, Greece, the gateway to Mount Olympus. As the night wore on, I got increasing drunk and eventually found myself hanging out with a bunch of old Greek guys drinking ouzo. We discovered the closest thing we had to a common language was German, so the night devolved into one of those where you get so wasted can't find your way back to your pension. We had great conversations, though, including some quite heated discussions about Macedonian politics, which drinking also made me an expert on.

I actually considered doing my MA dissertation on alcohol and language fluency before settling on a dryer topic. Preliminary research showed me that while fluency (the ability to speak without stopping, etc) improved, accuracy went to hell. It's all related to the way alcohol makes you lose inhibitions and do things you might not normally do, be it hit on that girl you've had a crush on, swim across that frozen river, or speak in a langauge you don't really know.

The best way to learn or study a language :

1) Complete immersion : I currently live in a tiny, rural fishing village in Japan, where I am the only foreigner in my town. I am forced to speak and study the language in a grassroots level.

2) Pick up a book and actually study it.

3) Make an effort to study it...if you have to pay a teacher to teach you bc procrastination seems to be the problem, then do so.

4) Make friends with the locals. Japan is very regional-minded...so you will find that even local neighbourhoods, have their own slangs, idioms and expressions that are different from the next neighbourhood down the road!