Learn Languages with Steve Kaufmann

The US Foreign Service Institute sorts languages into five categories based on how long they take English speakers to learn. Spanish and French sit at the easy end, while Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and Arabic land in the hardest group at around 88 weeks. I've spoken languages from almost every category over the years, from Persian and Ukrainian to Turkish and Mandarin. Some felt as hard as the list says, and some didn't. Which category is your target language in?

I'm on the border of Portugal and Spain, and yesterday at lunch I spoke five or six languages with people from Scandinavia, Germany, France, and even a Chinese family who live here. That kind of variety makes me very happy. Not everyone has the same appetite for new things, and that's okay. But if you want to learn languages, you need that curiosity, that desire to try something different. What first made you curious about another language?

People often tell me to learn 10 words a day and nail them down until I can use them. That has never worked for me. I read and listen a lot, look words up, and simply accept that I'll forget most of them at first. Over time, meeting the same words in different contexts is what makes them stick. Do you try hard to memorize new words, or do you let them come to you?

When I start a language like Persian or Arabic, at first it's just noise. I can't even tell where one word ends and the next begins. So I listen first, every morning, while I make breakfast or do my exercises. I listen to a short story two or three times, move on to the next one, and come back to it later. Do you start a new language with listening or reading?

Portuguese should be easy for me. I speak Spanish, and the vocabulary, grammar and word order are almost the same. But when I go to speak Portuguese, Spanish keeps getting in the way. I had the same experience moving from Japanese to Korean, and with Persian words hiding in Arabic. Have you ever found a "similar" language harder than you expected?