Kovács - The three ingredients to easily speak any language: The lazy-fun approach

THE THREE INGREDIENTS TO

EASILY SPEAK

ANY LANGUAGE

The lazy-fun approach

S K KOVCS

C O N T E N T S

I: Introduction

Tower of Babel

How it all began

II: An unconventional approach

Watch the baby!

Subconscious learningDoes it really work?

Grammar? No, please!

Make mistakes!

Languagespff, they are all the same

III: The three Ingredients

Listen, listen Are you even listening?

Let go of the meaning and never translate

Speak it instantly

IV: The learning approach

The lazy and fun approach

Copycat

One-on-one conversation

Make up short stories

Think in your target language

V: Epilogue

Why I wrote this book?

C H A P T E R I

Introduction

TOWER OF BABEL

Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

-Genesis 11:7, Holy Bible

So, we all know the story, right? A united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar. There they agreed to build a tower that would take them to heaven. Seeing this, God confused their speech so that they could no longer understand each other. This story implies that there was a time when only one language was spoken. That must have been pretty awesome. Just imagine how easy would be for us to communicate and connect with each other if there was only one single language in the whole world.

It does not matter if you are a believer or not, the fact is that there are more than six thousand languages on our planet. Some of those languages are extinct, some are only spoken by small groups of people but that does not take away from the fact that six thousand is a pretty badass amount of languages for a small planet like ours.

But, as I already mentioned, the cold fact is that there are thousands of languages and we cant just eliminate them. The only possible way to overcome the language barrier among nations is by learning as many of them as possible. Sounds simple, right? Just learn those languages so that we can understand each other again and rebuild that tower. The more languages we speak, the more doors will open up for us and the more connected we will become. Yet, there are people among us that speak only one language. Holy meatballs!

Most of the time the reason behind it is nothing more than a limiting belief: learning a second, a third or fourth language is very difficult, it takes up a lot of precious time and energy and you also need to be talented. In this book, I am going to shift your paradigm about language learning. I am going to show you that learning a second, a third, a fourth and even a fifth language is easy, takes up no extra time or effort and you would only need talent if you wanted to become the next Justin Bieber.

Whenever we cannot do or achieve something that others can, we tend to blame it on talent. I wish I was that talented. The truth is that nowadays talent is seriously overrated, especially when it comes to learning to speak new languages. Just think about it for a second. Every language that you aspire to learn is already spoken by millions of people unless of course you want to learn Iberian or Etruscan. So, you mean to tell me that if you want to learn French, you need to be talented? What about the sixty-five million inhabitants of France? Are they all talented? No, of course not. Most of them speak it because it is their mother tongue and others because they have learned it as a second or third language. It certainly has nothing to do with talent. We humans are all blessed with the ability to learn any language that is spoken by other human beings. Let me prove my point in the following chapters.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

As a child, I spent a lot of time watching TV, but every single afternoon from half past four to six oclock I had two options: play outside or watch Mexican soap operas. Yes, you have guessed it: this was mommys TV time. She was literally obsessed with these series and she has never missed one single episode. I could have just played outside, but I was just too lazy so I chose to join her.

There was just one single problem: I could not understand anything from the series at all. So, instead of giving up, I just continued watching them, even though I couldnt understand what the heck it was all about. It is still better than playing outside. I thought to myself. I just continued watching and nagging my mom to explain what that drama was all about. After a couple of months, my mom decided to test my Spanish skills and asked me about a specific episode of the series. Note, that my mom could not understand a lot of Spanish herself, she was dependent on the subtitles. She was shocked as I explained to her all the turns and twists of that episode.

Seemingly, I was able to understand everything after only a couple of months. I had no idea how I did it back then, all I knew is that I wanted to speak it as well. So, what did I do? Did I join a Spanish class? Nope! Did I hire a private teacher? Yeah right, like we could have afforded that. So I just started speaking it. I had no idea how to speak Spanish, so I just copied the actors and guess what. Within a couple of weeks, I was able to formulate my own thoughts in Spanish. I was not improving as fast as I wished to because I had nobody to talk Spanish with, but I was having a lot of fun with it.

I learned to speak Spanish in less than a year all by myself. I had no idea how did that happen either. All I knew was that it was easy as hell and that everybody was amazed by my performance. I remember feeling rather guilty about it because people around me were giving me all this credit for something I have not earned. I was like: Its just a language, no big deal!

Later on, I realized what happened back then. I just used some natural language learning skills that we all have and we all use when we learn how to speak our first language. Most of the people, for an unknown reason, forget how to use these skills. These skill sets are replaced by limiting beliefs which tell them that it is not possible to easily learn a foreign language. So, then they try it the hard way and they do get results over time but not as much and not as fast as they initially expected. The official definition of stupidity is: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So dont be stupid!

C H A P T E R I I

An unconventional approach

WATCH THE BABY!

Babies are amazing and if we watch them carefully, they can educate us. Sounds silly, right? Let me explain.

Babies dont do a lot. They eat, they produce shitty diapers, they cry a lot and, of course, they make a mess everywhere. They definitely dont study languages, yet after about a dozen of months they start speaking the language of their environment. In case a baby grows up with two or, even more languages around it, it starts speaking them all without mixing them up.

Some falsely believe this superpower is due to the extra amount of brain cells a baby has. Well, actually the human brain is like a muscle. If we dont use it, there will be no new connections made between our brain cells and as a result, we wont get any smarter. That means that we have an advantage over babies when it comes to learning because we have a more experienced brain with way more brain cell connections. So, babies are not smarter than us adults but they do have something that not all of us have and that is a stress-free life and a focused brain. They dont have to worry about work or the bills or their mother-in-law. They are just fine and their main focus is on understanding the people around them and to be understood. Those two ingredients are the key to effortless and fun language learning.

I am sure you have heard of somebody that has learned a foreign language while abroad in record time. That is not a miracle either. We, human beings like to communicate so when we are put in a situation where we no longer can use our own language we instinctively try to adapt. We just seek to understand and to be understood and language is our main tool. Being in contact every day with the new language makes new connections in our brains. These new connections are the basis of effortless learning. We are basically in the same situation as the baby.