Reddit reviews Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

Upvoted because I think this is a good conversation, but I'm going to offer an alternative point of view.

I'm going to quote a few excerpts from Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner who put it far better than I ever could. I cut out and shortened sections because I don't want to plagiarize too much (Get the book!)

> I was recently asked the following: "If I had four hours to prepare for a date with a Cambodian supermodel, what would be the best use of my time?" Here's my answer: learn to say one phrase-any phrase-really well. Sit on YouTube or Wikipedia for a few hours, look at pictures of mouth positions, and mimic recordings until you can sound like a native speaker for three seconds. It will Blow. Her Mind.

> An accurate accent is powerful because it is the ultimate gesture of empathy. It connects you to another person's culture in a way that words never can, because you have bent your body as well as your mind to match that person's culture. Anyone can learn "bawn-JURE" in a few seconds...

> People with strong foreign accents are frequently treated as less adept at the language (and less intelligent as a person) than they are.

> And even if this is unfair, it is understandable. It's uncomfortable to speak with someone when you aren't sure what they're saying or whether they understand you. To try to relieve this discomfort, you may start speaking louder, using simpler words, switching to their language (if you can), or avoiding the person altogether. My father inexplicably develops an exaggerated Spanish accent whenever he orders Chinese food: "I LIKE-A CHEEKON FRY RICE-O PLEASE-O."

And here's a Youtube video that further supports this: American Wife Speaks Cantonese Better Than Chinese Husband

The Chinese husband is more fluent in terms of breadth of vocab and grammar, but the American wife simply has better pronunciation. As a result, there are comments on their videos like "Very very much impressed with her Cantonese!!! It is really better than her husbands's;) Sorry man...but really"

Ultimately, it all comes down to your goals. Some are happy to study Japanese to simply get by. For me, it already takes years and years to learn Japanese. I think it would be a waste to spend 5-10 years only to end up with a heavily accented tongue.

When I studied abroad, my buddies and I would often share stories where we couldn't understand why our host families would have trouble understanding something we said. Our families would then say, "OH! You mean 'such-and-such'??" repeating back the same exact phrase as if something was different... We'd shrug our shoulders and wonder what the hell was different. Looking back, I'm positive it was because our ears weren't attuned to pitch accent. Our Japanese teachers told us to not sweat pitch accent, yet we ALL had stories like this. They didn't happen super often, but with enough frequency to make us scratch our heads.

Compared to vocab and grammar, it's not really a huge time investment, but it's important to get right from the beginning so you don't develop bad habits. Despite not being great at pitch accent yet, after even just one year of adding Forvo.com pronunciations to my Anki cards, hearing poor pronunciation now sticks out like a sore thumb and is quite difficult to listen to. I think the time investment is well worth it.

Currently I'm learning German for my language requirements, and have never taken a German class in my life. You can definitely try to teach yourself if you'd like, and when you do you will be able to focus on what's most important for grad school (i.e. reading comprehension.) If you're interested I'd recommend reading this book to learn about the best and most efficient ways to teach yourself a foreign language: Forever Fluent

Otherwise, you can see if there are any online or local classes which provide courses on the language(s) you are hoping to learn.

You may also be able to get funded traveling opportunities through your school (to take a language immersion program, or to actually study abroad in a place that speaks the language you are hoping to learn, though this may be more difficult with languages such as Latin!)

If you decide to go the self-taught route, I can provide advice or resources if you'd like. Good luck!

When learning a language it is useful to use a spaced repetition system like Anki or the Leitner system (if you'd rather have physical flashcards) to commit vocabulary and grammatical concepts to your long-term memory. The idea is to practice recalling the concept after ever-increasing time intervals, which allows you to remember large amounts of information effectively. I'd recommend a book called Fluent Forever if you want to read more about SRSs and how they can be used in language learning. The author has a lot of fascinating ideas about how to go about learning a language.

Latin and Ancient Greek will be interesting cases due to the sheer amount of grammar involved; traditionally you learn these by copying and memorizing huge conjugation and declension charts. But using Anki for vocabulary will help you nonetheless. You might also be interested in Lingua Latina per se Illustrata for learning Latin; its approach is to have you start reading simple sentences immediately and builds up more complex grammar naturally.

But short answer: Anki will help you memorize vocabulary solidly over the long-term.

I would recommend picking up Gabriel Wyner's book "Fluent Forever" for your Anki needs. He's a huge proponent of using Anki to the point where the book could almost be called "How to Use Anki to Learn a Language."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IBZ405W/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

I recommend checking out the book Fluent Forever, which has a number of useful tips to get the most out of any flashcard system.

Frequency lists have a place, but ideally you would make your own cards which complement your way of thinking and your personal goals in the language.

If you are serious about learning Dutch, I recommend reading Fluent Forever before getting started. Usually in libraries. Really good ideas on how to pick up languages and make them stick.

Reading helps me relax and I enjoy learning amazon has a lot of books
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IBZ405W/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1M0QWUA771N76&coliid=I25OHMDSSQO9UQ

I'm going to give you some advice that I hope you take to heart. Your study process, meaning what you do with the material, is far more important than having "the best resource".

If all you are doing is using a resource, you will not learn the language very well at all. You have to cultivate a better process to work with the resources you have.

1. You have to learn actively. Guess at the meanings of words before you look them up as this will help the meaning stick. This is why people feel that learning a word in context helps them remember it better. It's not a magic component of context that helps, it's the the act of struggling with the meaning before the meaning is made clear.
   
   
2. Use and review the material that you learn in an iterative way. Integrate material you have already learned into the process of learning new material. If you learned vocabulary for family members last week and you are learning the past tense, write about your family when you were growing up. If the next week, you are learning about dates and times write a few paragraphs talking about your family from 1800 to the present (even if it's fiction). This creates a web of concepts in your mind and is superior to learning things in isolated sets.
   
   
3. Seek feedback regularly. Ask native speakers to help you and evaluate your progress. Test yourself to get a reality check. You will convince yourself that you know the material you have covered because when you review the book it seems familiar. This is a lie. The way you know that you know the material is by using it in unfamiliar situations. Use practice tests and fill-in-the blank exercises to check your progress. You must actually take the tests and do the exercises. If you don't actually go through the process of writing in the answers, you can trick yourself into thinking you know the answers better than you actually do.
   
   This sort of learning is hard because you have to face the fact of your learning and not how you wish it to be. Too many people use their resources to the point where they can almost recite it from heart but then when faced with a native speaker, they can't produce. It's because they mistake familiarity with the text for mastery of the concepts. Take a look at the progress that u/shiner_man made in just 90 days. He made his own flashcards, worked through his material repeatedly and in different ways. That's how you leanr a language. Of course you don't want resources that are crap, but at a certain point the way you work is far more important than having "the best" course.
   
   Read these books:
   
   Fluent Forever, Gabriel Wyner
   
   Make it Stick, Peter C. Brown

Some of it is specifying what protocols should be in place for the rendering of the text (in this case UTF-8), another part is keeping track of what search query was used (in this case "fluent forever"). There are other segments of the URL that signify other things, but you get the idea. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

If you want the best possible looking URL then you want:

http://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget-ebook/dp/B00IBZ405W

Thank you for the tip. Do you have a favorite article that supports learning most frequent words in particular when learning language? I'm planning to do so for French but I'm not sure if this is a good idea.

Also, do you have any good article/book on science-based language learning, like this article on study technique, but focused on study languages instead. For some reasons all the language learning resources online are mostly based on "here's what works for me", even the famous "Fluent Forever" approach.