2026-05-29
8 分钟Today I want to talk about learning slowly,
or rather, why, if you accept the fact that learning a language is a process
that takes time, if you learn slowly, in effect, you will learn more quickly.
I was reminded the other day of an Internet influencer by the name of Tim Ferriss,
who commented some years ago that he could deconstruct any language with 10 or 12 sentences
and that he could achieve fluency in record time by using this method.
And, of course, that's not true.
In fact, I have made a few videos where I present the counter-argument to his suggestion
that you can learn any language quickly by mastering 10 sentences.
The gist of his argument is that if you understand how pronouns and direct objects
and indirect objects work, then you've got the sense of the language and you'll learn it very quickly.
In fact, even with very similar languages like Spanish and Portuguese,
where all of those pronouns and genders, they're all essentially the same, or French for that matter.
In fact, it takes a long time to get used to the other language.
Same with Mandarin and Cantonese.
Lots of Mandarin speakers cannot speak Cantonese, even though they claim to understand it.
The similarity of the structure of languages, even the similarity of the vocabulary,
doesn't mean that you can pick it up in a short period of time.
In fact, it takes quite a while, which is a good thing, and I'll explain why it's a good thing.
Now, I have in the past never made claims