The One Thing You Need To Learn Any Language

the answer is in the title

In reality, there is only one factor that determines whether or not you’ll be successful at learning a language. And how quickly and how well you’ll learn it.

It’s not talent (definitely not).

And it’s not perseverance (although it certainly doesn’t hurt.)

Mo Willems “"Watch me throw the ball"

It’s not your age.

It’s not even your ability to maintain the longest Duolingo streak.

It’s….

 

….DRUMROLL….

….Need. 

That’s it. Need. It’s how badly you need to learn this language.

For better or for worse, our brains and bodies are extremely efficient machines that know very well where to direct resources, when and how to spend energy, and when to conserve it. 

If you lift weights three times a week, your body knows that it needs to grow muscle to lift heavier next time and will direct all the protein from your fingernails into your muscle tissue. Because it knows that you need muscles more than fingernails. (Good idea to eat lots of chicken breast if you enjoy having both.)

If you don’t eat for three days your metabolism will slow down because your body knows it needs to preserve energy.

Our brain works the same way. It will agree to spend energy on something only if you manage to convince it that it needs it.

Babies acquire their first language because language is important for their survival. Because at some point between the ages 0 and 16 their needs and desires become too sophisticated (“make me a HIGH ponytail!!!!”) to be effectively communicated by a simple waaaaa…. 

It’s the same for adults learning a new language.

My parents learned Hebrew after immigrating to Israel at the advanced ages of 49 and 57¹ respectively because they needed to know this language to function in their daily lives in this country.

Fully half the world is bilingual not because they’re all language learning enthusiasts but because their environment requires them to know more than one language.

If tomorrow you move to a distant island where no one speaks English and you need to eat but you are also allergic to coconuts and alligator gizzards, you will learn to communicate your needs in the local language to save your life. 

But what about if you want to learn a new language but don’t have an alligator gizzard allergy or the option of moving to a distant island? (That would be me!)

In this case, you artificially create an environment of need. You trick your brain into thinking you need to learn this language for survival.

Ten years ago I learned French in a month not because I managed to earn thousands of XPs on Duolingo and not because I have supernatural abilities but because I had a deadline: I was invited to a job interview at a French-speaking university. But even that wasn’t enough to trick my brain on a day-to-day basis. A month, I think, is too abstract of a concept for our brains to motivate them.

That’s why motivators like “I want to learn German because I want to travel to Germany next year” aren’t usually enough to spur people forward. The need has to be immediate.  

Back then I lived in Toronto so there was no way to create an actual immersion environment, but whenever I could, I created a mini-immersion bubble. During that month I didn’t listen to, read, or write anything in a language other than French. I changed my phone and computer settings to French. I journaled in French. I talked to Toronto squirrels and French. Even when I had to write an email to someone I would first write it in my three-year-old French tricking my brain into thinking that this was the language we had to communicate in from now on. For all intents and purposes, I moved to a village in the middle of Quebec where nobody spoke anything other than French.

Right now I can’t create a full immersion environment because I’m learning too many languages at the same time (and also because I have two kids who want to talk to me from time to time in a language that all of us understand) but need still has to be the driving factor.

With Finnish, my need came from the fact that I promised myself (and the whole world, i.e. all 87 of my FB friends) that I would be able to understand one episode of Peppa Pig by the end of the week. And then it came from actually being immersed in the episode and not understanding anything.

And then later I signed up for a Finnish eBook app only to realize that all the books were too hard for me but the whole thing was in Finnish and I didn’t know which button meant ‘cancel.’ So this time the need to urgently improve my Finnish came from the desire not to have to pay 16 euros a month for a service I wasn’t using.

With Thai, that need came from the fact that I promised just one person, Koby F. that I would be able to talk to an injured monolingual Thai person.

That’s why I don’t like learning resources that teach you in English. If a video starts with “Good morning folks today I will teach you how to say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ in Uzbek and will explain why it is so important to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when speaking this language and blah blah blah…. ” I run from it like a plaque. It doesn’t matter how useful those phrases are, because my brain upon hearing this introduction has already decided that it doesn’t really need to learn them.

The best language learning resources create a mini-immersion bubble, tricking your brain into thinking you need to learn this language.

That’s why I love Grace so much. Grace tells simple beginner stories and uses pictures, facial expressions, and gestures to help you understand what’s happening in the story, but never speaks English to you. I want Grace to teach me every language.

That’s also why I’m not a huge fan of Duolingo.

Because no matter how gamified the system, no matter how long your streak, no matter how many XPs you earn, and how often you finish first place in the Sapphire league… if it asks you to translate sentences like this…

…it sends a clear message to your brain that this language that you’re learning will only ever be useful as a party trick so you don’t really have to make an effort to learn it.

p.s. That’s also why I’m failing spectacularly at learning Rusyn. Because, being a Russian speaker, I already understand 80% of it, and as of now, I haven’t yet managed to convince my brain that learning the very specific grammatical features that distinguish one East Slavic language from another is necessary for my continued survival.

1. Yes, I know that I’m 42. Whatever. My parents were old when they immigrated to Israel, ok?