The Single Hardest Part About Learning A Language

My guess is that quite a few people who want to learn a language don’t ever get started because they make some false assumptions about learning. Whether they’ve heard too many stories about people who have tried and failed, or they have tried and failed, or they worry the words might be too hard to memorize, or the pronunciation may prove too difficult to literally wrap your lips around or they just aren’t smart enough.

It’s all bullshit.

There’s only one thing that is incredibly hard about learning a language. Just one. And it takes no talent, no superior intellect, no secret to master it. I did it. You can too.

And it’s the only effective and time efficient way to learn a language.

The single hardest part about learning a language IS DOING IT EVERY SINGLE DAY. Every damn day in and day out. Through rain or snow, in sickness and in health. Committing to it as if it were air. Or water. Or food.

That’s it. If you can muster the discipline, the self control, the drive – to be involved with the language just once per day – you will succeed. Words, pronunciation, grammar – it all pales in comparison to committing to do something every day.

Was I 100% successful over the past 14 months? Absolutely not. And neither will you. But that’s OK. Sure, the goal is to be 100% successful in soaking something in everyday but it is almost impossible to achieve. At one point, I caught a terrible cold and missed two days. A few months later, I got behind in my work and missed a few more. Other days I was so fed up with learning Italian, I just couldn’t do it.

But I made up for it on other days. Days where I kicked some serious Italian ass. For instance, on a vacation to Hawaii, while sitting on the beach staring out to sea or taking long walks on the shore, I practiced my Pimsleur 4 hours a day. My Mom lives 90 minutes away from me by car so when I go visit her I get in about 3 hours of Italian in a day. So we all have good days and bad days. Just like life.

The goal is to participate in some form of learning your language everyday. My early goal was 90 minutes every day. That’s a big commitment. So I decided to combine two things. Exercise and Italian. Every morning I rode my stationary exercise bike, a Schwinn 213 Recumbent Exercise Bike, - silent, wonderful, well built – and listened to my Italian. Because I was tackling 2 chores at the same time, both of which I knew were good for me, it was doubly difficult to blow off a day.

Inevitably, there were days I couldn’t face the bike or the Italian. On those days I came up with alternatives. Things that immersed me in Italian but didn’t require robot-like repetition.

In future blogs I’ll go through these alternatives in detail, but here are a few I’ve used. I watched RAI Italian television, I tried to read an child’s Italian book I bought online, I visited and perused various online sites that teach Italian, I listened to Italian radio shows online, I watched YouTube videos in Italian, I cruised the headlines of the prominent Italian newspapers, I read through lists of cognates, and I had lunch with one of my several friends who had started learning Italian and gave up. These lunches allowed me the opportunity to act as a kind of “teacher” to them and talk about the tiny bit more I had learned.

Again, to beat the dead horse, the goal is to hear it, see it, read it, absorb something of the Italian language every day. It gets your ears and eyes used to it. Even in desperate times, a few minutes each day will move you an inch closer to the language being comfortable. Everyday. Commit to it.

My example with RAI Italian television is a case in point. I ordered the service from Dish Network for an added cost of $9.95 a month. (I love it so much I am now upgrading to the multiple Italian channels package for $20.) At the end of my workday, I’d turn on RAI and watch. I tried to listen but I was brand new and knew nothing. But I’d try and follow the story line or try and figure out what they were talking about. Some days I’d just admire how damn beautiful the women were! But the dialog? All gibberish. I couldn’t get anything. A couple of weeks went by. Then out of nowhere it seemed, I heard a word I knew. Vorrei. I backed up my Tivo-like device and listened again. Aha! Over the next few weeks I started grabbing a few more words. Little bits here and there. And then, like a miracle from heaven, a few months into this, I heard my first complete sentence. It was like a lightning bolt hit me.

In those early weeks, although by all outward appearances nothing was happening, somewhere deep inside my head, my brain was getting used to hearing the “sound” of Italian. Slowly, day by day, I got a little better. I heard patterns of words. I grabbed half a sentence. It was a diversion from repetitive Pimsleur but I was still learning.

Every day. That’s it. The rest will come.