Updated: 08/13/2018 | August 13th, 2018
I’ve always been bad at languages. I barely made it through high school Spanish and have forgotten all the French I hired a tutor to show me. Ich bin verflucht. Or so I thought until I became pals with Benny Lewis from Fluent in 3 Months. Benny has mastered a method for learning languages that has helped me break languages down into smaller, a lot more easily learnable parts. With his help, I’ve remembered a lot of my Spanish, learned Thai, and picked up some Swedish.
Today, I turn the blog over to Benny (who just published a book on language learning) to share how you can learn the basics of any language for your next trip. knowing just a few basic phrases goes a long way when you travel and puts you in the good graces of the locals.
Here is Benny:
Way too often, we arrive in a country and think to ourselves, “Man, I wish I took some time to learn the basics of this language before I got here!” Or maybe you think anything less than mastering the language is not beneficial enough to invest time in. but even if you only have a month or a week before your trip, or even if you fly out tomorrow, you still have time to learn some basics of the local language. You only need a short period of time to master a few crucial words and phrases. and no, you don’t need to be a language genius to pick up the basics fast.
I spoke only English until I was 21. I nearly failed German in school, and I lived in Spain for six months without being able to learn the language — because I was doing it wrong. fast forward to now: I speak around a dozen languages and counting, and it’s because I make my study hours work for me, practice speaking the language ideal away, and don’t waste my time studying what I won’t need. even with just the basics in a language, I’ve had outstanding experiences, like receiving my Chinese name on a train in the middle of China…just because I understood the question, “What’s your name?”
Here are four steps to basic fluency:
Step 1: Be certain with your goals
A substantial mistake lots of people make is trying to take on too much at once. having high goals and wanting to become fluent in a language, or even mastering it someday, is a noble goal, but this isn’t going to help you ideal now with your looming travel plans.
To be successful in learning what you need for your trip, you need as much specificity as possible. I’m lucky enough to usually have three whole months before a trip, in which I can devote most of my days to learning a language, and that makes fluency a realistic target.
I’ve had tighter deadlines, though, and was still able to work with them. Hell, even when I had one single hour of time before my trip to Poland, considering that I needed to prepare for my TEDx talk on language learning in Warsaw in English, I still took that time to learn enough basic polish to be able to stretch it into a half-hour Skype call (constantly looking up words to keep the basic chat alive).
The way you do this is to know precisely what you need to learn and to learn only that.
In your mini-project:
You need specificity — Do NOT have a vague goal like “learn Spanish.” If you want to go abroad in June, say to yourself that you want to be “basic conversational in three months,” given that you’ll put 10 hours a week into it. If you only have a month, then choose “very confident vacationer in 30 days,” and put an hour a day into it or a lot more if you can. If you have a flight out in three days, then take two or a lot more hours each one of the next three days, and goal for “get by with basic necessities well in 72 hours.”
You need to build a you-specific vocabulary — Guidebooks are terrific for general phrases like “how are you?” but you’re a lot more complicated than that. So spend your study time tailoring your vocabulary to your certain needs. step 2 below shows you how to start.
Step 2: learn the words YOU will use
If you’re starting from scratch, the first thing you need to do is think about which words you’ll be using most on a daily basis in whatever situations you might be in — starting a conversation, sitting at a bar, talking about yourself, ordering in a restaurant, whatever it is. Dann:
Sit down and write out a self-introduction in English — Introduce yourself to an imaginary stranger. tell them where you’re from, what you do, why you’re traveling, and so on. then take a look at what you’ve got and pick out certain words you think will be most crucial for your abroad vocabulary, translate them, and then use a web site like forvo.com (actually spoken by a native) or Google translate (produced by means of automation) to hear how they’re pronounced in that language. In my case, the first words I’ll always need to learn first are “Irish” (my nationality), “blogger” (my job), and “vegetarian” considering that I’m a traveling vegetarian. figure out what your words are and commit them to memory first.
Make a list of foods you like, things you want to do, and other daily necessities — Everyone needs to know the word for “bathroom” pretty much on their first day abroad, so go ahead and add that to your list. But also include things that you as an individual can’t live without. Whether it’s coffee or diet Coke, sandwiches or oysters, know the words for your go-to foods. and if you plan to try anything in particular while you’re there, like yoga, zip-lining, or dipping in a hot spring, learn those too. because I’m a vegetarian, for example, I have to learn the words for pork, ham, bacon, sausage, chicken, beef, and fish — so I can ask the waiter for something without these foods in them. Whatever it is that you’ll be asking about, jot it down, look up the translations, and make yourself a cheat sheet.
Look up a list of cognates, or words that are similar between the languages — It’s actually impossible to genuinely “start from scratch” when you’re learning a new language. lots of languages have very long lists of words you already know the indicating of (albeit with slightly different pronunciations). If “sandwich” is on your list of favorite foods, for example, you already know how to say it in French. In Spanish, healthcare facility is still hospital, and in German the word for fish is pronounced exactly the same. even a very different language like Japanese has a ton of these “loanwords” for everyday things you might need like coffee, milk, and glass.
Use mnemonics to learn unfamiliar words — To remember new words really fast that are nothing like what you’re used to in English, try using a fun mnemonic — an image or story that you associate with a particular word. sounds silly, but it works. When I was learning French, for instance, I remembered that gare was “train station” by visualizing a big fat orange Garfield running out of breath through a train station to catch a train to a lasagna-eating competition, with lots of color and sounds in my mind to make it really stick. This technique works wonders, and creating this image in my mind made the gare–train station association stick much faster than it ever would have by rote repetition alone.
Ressourcen:
List of really beneficial online complimentary dictionaries
Memrise.com (fantastic online resource to suggest fun and easy-to-remember mnemonics)
Forvo (hear words pronounced by a native speakers)
Google Übersetzer
Step 3: learn whole phrases
With the short time frame you have, you don’t have time to try to understand the grammar of the language. I highly recommend that you skip over grammar studies, which are better suited to later in language learning anyway, and instead just memorize a few whole sentences so that you can convey your point in already-formed phrases.
Get a guidebook, but neglect most of it — Guidebooks are terrific for the essentials, but you won’t need most of what’s in them. Those books try to deal with everyone’s needs, and everyone’s needs are not your needs. Skim through the book and highlight the phrases you will need, like “Where is the bathroom?” or “How much does this cost?” or “Excuse me, do you speak English?” neglect the rest, and focus only on what’s beneficial to you. I like Lonely planet phrasebooks, or you can use this online list of basic phrases.
Create your own sentences, and have them checked if possible — Try your best to create a translation by piecing the words together, or (more ideally) changing a single word in a pre-made sentence in your phrasebook. For example, I might replace the word “bathroom” with “supermarket” in the pre-made phrase “Where is the bathroom?” and the resulting sentence is likely to be grammatically correct. You can even use Google translate for the whole sentence. You can submit your pre-made sentence to the site Lang-8 to have native speakers right it for complimentary if your phrase is short enough, and they can get back to you surprisingly quickly.
Start focusing on how your phrases sound in the language — Once you have your master list of words and phrases, you need to hear how native speakers pronounce them. If you don’t know any native speakers in the language, it doesn’t matter — there are complimentary websites like Rhinospike that let you submit sentences you want to hear spoken, and they’ll send back a translation of your phrase, spoken by a native.
Once you know how the words sound, you need to commit them to memory. One trick that works for me is to sing the phrases out to myself. When I was learning Italian, for instance, I sang, “Where is the bathroom?” in the tune of the big Ben chime, and took Dove si trova il gabinetto? and had it roll of my tongue easier. putting the words to a tune will cement them into your memory and give you terrific solo-pronunciation practice.
Ressourcen:
For a good list of phrases you’ll need: Lonely planet phrasebook or the Omniglot phrase list
Lang-8 (get your attempted translations corrected by a native)
Rhinospike (hear wholeSätze von einem Eingeborenen gesprochen)
Schritt 4: Verwenden Sie es, bevor Sie fliegen
Mit diesen Tipps können Sie tatsächlich genug von der Sprache in Ihren Kopf stecken, um etwas wirklich nützlich zu haben, wenn Sie im Land ankommen. Aber es gibt ein endgültiges – und sehr wertvolles -, was Sie tun können, bevor Sie sicherstellen, dass alles reibungslos verläuft:
Üben Sie mit einem Muttersprachler in der Entwicklung – es spielt keine Rolle, wo Sie leben. Websites wie Italki ermöglichen es Ihnen, entweder einen kostenlosen Austausch einzurichten (damit Sie für eine Sprachstunde „bezahlen“, indem Sie zuerst jemandem mit seinem Englisch helfen) oder wirklich kostengünstige Lektionen erhalten (ich habe japanische Unterricht für nur 5 US -Dollar pro Stunde erhalten Zum Beispiel) und eine kurze Sitzung auf Skype einrichten, um das zu verwenden, was Sie jetzt mit einem nativen Ideal von zu Hause aus wissen. Sie werden hören, was jemand, der spontan spontan spricht, wirklich fühlt, sehen, wo Ihre Schwächen in der Entwicklung der Entwicklung der Sprache in der realen Welt sind und Probleme oder Fragen angehen können, die in Ihrem Kopf waren.
Rollenspiel, um herauszufinden, was Ihnen fehlt-verwenden Sie Ihre Zeit mit einem nativen Online-Chatten, um die realen Situationen auszuspielen, in denen Sie im Ausland sein werden. Zum Beispiel können Sie üben, ein kompliziertes vegetarisches Essen zu bestellen oder ein Hotelzimmer gut zu mieten, bevor Sie es wirklich tun müssen. Während Sie gehen, werden Sie feststellen, dass es Wörter gibt, die Sie nicht kennen, die Sie nicht kennen. Vielleicht haben Sie beispielsweise nicht bemerkt, wie normalerweise Sie über Ihre Katze oder einen anderen anderen sprechen möchten. Wenn Sie diese Löcher in Ihrem Wortschatz finden, schreiben Sie die Wörter auf, die Sie benötigen, und fügen Sie sie Ihrer Master -Liste hinzu.
Auf diese Weise sind Sie auf dem Laufenden und sind bereits ein „erfahrener“ Lautsprecher, der weiß, wie es ist, mit einem Eingeborenen zu sprechen, und behalten einfach Ihren Schwung auf.
Denken Sie daran, es ist in Ordnung, Fehler zu machen!
Als ich Deutsch lernte, versuchte ich einmal, meinem (weiblichen) Kumpel zu sagen, dass ich gerade ein „cooles“ Video gemacht hatte und fragte, ob sie nach oben kommen wolle, um es zu sehen. Klingt unschuldig genug, oder? Irgendwie sagte ich tatsächlich: “Ich bin geil und ich möchte, dass du in mich in mich kommst”, wenn man bedenkt, dass das deutsche Wort für “cool” auch “geil” (Geil) zeigt und „Come“ auf Deutsch sexuell ist Konnotationen wie in Englisch, wenn Sie es falsch verwenden.
Wir waren lange Zeit Kumpels, also wusste sie, dass ich nicht mit ihr flirtete – ich erklärte meinen Fehler und wir lachten ihn aus. Es stellte sich heraus, dass die Welt nicht endete, und bis heute sind wir immer noch gute Freunde.
Ich habe es auch geschafft, es zu verrutschen, dass ich auf Spanisch schwanger bin (Embarazado/a) und in meinen ersten Wochen Französisch zu lernen, sagte immer wieder: “Danke, nett!” anstelle von „Vielen Dank“ (Merci Beaucoup gegen Merci Beau Cul). Und als ich in Brasilien ankam und dem Einwanderungsbeauftragten (Obrigado) „Danke“ danken wollte, sagte ich stattdessen: „Schokoladenbon!“ (Brigadeiro).
In jedem dieser Fälle war die Person, mit der ich sprach, der Tatsache bewusst war, dass ich immer noch Lerner war, wusste, dass ich nicht angegeben habe, wie es klang, und war klug genug, um aus dem Kontext zu sehen, was ich tatsächlich meinte . Anstatt mich wegen meines „unverzeihlichen“ Fehlers zu schimpfen, lächelten sie und fanden es großartig, dass ich es versuchte, in vielen Fällen gratulierten mir für meine Bemühungen.
Machen Sie sich also keine Sorgen, dass Sie am besten in einer neuen Sprache sind. Sie brauchen nicht viel Zeit oder sogar viel Geschick, um die Sprache Ihres nächsten Ziels zu erfassen. Sie brauchen nur einen Plan. Machen Sie Ihre Studienzeit alles über Sie und denken Sie daran, sich nicht in irrelevanten Worten, Phrasen und Grammatik festzuhalten, die Sie nicht benötigen.
Während viele Leute denken, dass das Erlernen einer Sprache nur eine Herausforderung sein kann, die jahrelang Zeit erfordert, hoffe ich, dass Sie in diesem Beitrag gesehen haben, dass Sie absolut zu einer Phase kommen können, in der Sie etwas sehr vorteilhaftes für Ihre Reise in einer wirklich kurzen Zeit haben können . Sie müssen sich nur in dem, was Sie anstreben