How Much Could You Learn in Six Weeks?

Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:11 am GMT
Last summer, I think there was a challenge over at H-T-L-L for anyone who wanted to do six weeks of intensive study in a language. I'm not sure how many people finished the challenge, but many were enthusiastic at first.

How much could you learn and what language would you attempt to learn? This could be polishing a fav. language or starting a new one.
Just one language, for this question please.

Think about writing (if the writing system is different), pronunciation, tourist words and resources.
Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:51 am GMT
Are they unemployed over there? If you're like me and have an hour spare a day, not very much. If you're unemployed and have entire days free then you'd learn rather much.
Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:24 am GMT
Well, it was a summer challenge. Students and teachers have the summer off and some people get a huge chunk of vacation (four weeks or so)...

My work considers me to be on "call" all the time. I'm not working all the time though and I'm able to do other things.
Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:25 am GMT
For Spanish six weeks is quite enough.
Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:35 am GMT
For tourist Spanish, I agree.
Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 3:48 am GMT
No, I know what I meant.
Earle   Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:43 am GMT
I didn't see that challenge, but I did do a crash course in Norwegian for a vacation trip. I already knew some Norwegian, and I spent a couple of months, but I worked on it for an hour or two each evening and I also had tapes and CDs which I used in my car. It all depends on how much your particular brain can absorb into memory. I felt that my effort was rewarded...
Xie   Mon Feb 25, 2008 12:57 pm GMT
To the Guests it may concern:

I think it's alright for you to write under this alias, esp. when you yourself are a former/current member of *one of the forums* out there; but then, it's sort of difficult for people to identify you and your words, like a humble mortal like me. Could you please just name yourself, so that *we* could address you specifically (like I did)? I'd be glad to see more lively discussions here (ad tone ends here).

==

I did try Esperanto. Brilliant, though I didn't continue, esp. because I couldn't think of how to continue with Esperanto, and my interest declined. It was at the time when I still had no idea of foreign language. I didn't know how to use bilingual texts or audios and to shadow and so on. But since it's so terribly easy, I still remember almost all the grammar rules... and a smattering of words.

21 hours aren't really much. It's just enough for basic concepts. But if it's done in six weeks, it's actually 42 hours, since you have to be psy. (and even physically) prepared. You'd care about the newly learnt things...
Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:11 pm GMT
Didn't Winston Churchill once claim that non-English Europeans could learn the fundamentals of English in just a few weeks of diligent study? Maybe English is easier to learn than most languages, at least to a basic level, because it has such simple morphology.
Mitch   Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:02 pm GMT
I think that you can learn a LOT in six weeks, if you add one more component to "massive" comprehensible input: memorization.

I brought up this topic before, specifically citing Heinrich Schliemann, the person who uncovered historical Troy. He claimed he originally had a bad memory, but worked on it so diligently, that he went from 6 months each learning English and French, to where he learned Dutch, Spanish, et al in 6 weeks time each! His method: memorizing whole sections of a book--sometimes whole books--using a translation to aid comprehension:

http://wiki.anomalytv.com/tavi/index.php?page=LanguageMethods

Same with ancient Greek--he memorized works by Homer and others.

Obviously, not everyone has the ability, diligence (or time!) to memorize 20 pages a day. But think how much you could "absorb" if you memorized--WITH COMPREHENSION--a long dialogue every day. That's 42 dialogues in 6 weeks.

Note the reply by "mike" in the thread I mentioned:

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t5606.htm

He listened to (and read aloud) each "text" in his Chinese book 20 times for comprehension. The memorization was almost a by-product. I knew a guy who did the same thing with Chinese, and I've read of others, too.

Note: In 42 days, you'd have to learn about 50-75 words a day to know the basic vocabulary.
Earle   Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:20 pm GMT
I'd add that, when you're learning closely-related languages, you're frequently just learning a new spelling and pronunciation for a word in your own language.
Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:26 pm GMT
Xie,

I'm sorry, but when I write with a monniker, a certain nutty female starts hounding me here. You probably know her. She was obsessed with me for awhile.
Guest   Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:40 pm GMT
Xie,

I could be wrong about that nutty female, but that's the impression I have.
Xie   Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:25 am GMT
I don't care :P, and I don't know.

There have been loads of guests who wouldn't want to reveal their names. If I were you, should that be of concern to me?

I'm easily identifiable because I put forward my (more or less) unique perspective, but then I could easily go under another alias. That's easy.

==

Yes, if I'd ever concentrate, with previous "amateur" experiences, I should be able to get loads of lessons of my textbook down to catch all the fine points about Mandarin pronunciation. My mileage should have been just fairly minus-advanced, but I've passed for a non-non-native and some lexical items have already been part of my active, everyday vocabulary. There you are, popularity and similarity, the two greatest pluses.
Guest   Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:48 am GMT
Xie,

You do know what :P means, don't you? Very well, I won't dip to your level. By the way, you should know that what you write in Chinese is not impossible to read.