Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferris is a successful author and blogger. Here Steve, of www.thelinguist.com, provides his views of Ferriss' approach to language learning.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• language learning
• LingQ

[ImAlwaysR1ght]

Hey Steve,

Tim Ferris should stick to business and leave the languages to the polyglots. Keep up the great videos.

[qwertyuiop726]

Ferriss' technique reminds me a lot of how I intuitively approached language learning at first- that is, as if it were a math problem. I figured that if I bought a Spanish grammar book and an English-Spanish dictionary, and memorized them both, then it was simply a matter of "plugging" the vocab into the grammatical structures and I would suddenly know Spanish.

Needless to say, I never got very far with that approach.

[animejoao]

and i want to ask you something, do you think that to learn japanese should i follow the method hiragana+katagana+kanji writing, or just go trying to talk and read, i talked with a friend that is japanese and he said to me that i dont need to learn to write kanji, understanding people and reading and understand its already good enough, not everybody should be a specialist in japanese, but do tell me what you think about this afirmation. thank you for your time.

[animejoao]

tim language method work for everybody, i think not however i will not say that all that he says is bullshit, but aproach language in a mental process and try to understand what works for you, in portuguese there is a saying... discover what everybody is doing and then do the contrary, there is always shortcuts to everything you dont need to take the long road, sometimes the shortcut its just a better road.

[animejoao]

must live in that country, i think that what people forget about tim that he lives 3 moths in another country talking only with people in the language that he wants to learn, and necesity is the mother of all learning process, i think that the same logic forhaps should not work in you live in usa and want to learn japanese, for us people who travel a lot we need language to being able to survive in another place, its not the same that learning just to read a book or watch a movie.

[animejoao]

i know portuguese, spanish and english, i am just learning japanese right now, and from my experience in living in another country with another culture that his method can work, however its just like he says in the book, people have diferent definicions about what it means to learn a language, to me its about comunicate your ideas and understand another person talking to you, and of course a little read and writing in that language, that is important to, but for example in order to do that you

[rfwelsh]

Ferris is just another conman milking poor saps of their hard earned money.

[yuriythebest]

Wow thanks for this video- I discovered it a little late I must say. I'm currently following Tim Ferriss's tips on getting fit/loosing weight- I sure hope it is better than his advice in language learning but he does seem fit. Also, I'll now be doing "something" for my fitness as opposed to nothing so at least there's that.

[randallnefdt1]

Also he didn't study at Princeton he lectured there.... Perhaps you SHOULD read it again......

[randallnefdt1]

I think you should read what he says again!!! Because you've obviously misinterpreted what he said!! HE DOES NOT SAY IT WILL TAKE YOU ONE HOUR..... He says 3months to get into conversation to 95% and 5 years to get to 98%.....

[discjockeyfuture]

Very good points! You are going to acquire Germanic languages or Latin languages faster because of their influence on English. Slavic, Middle Eastern, and Oriental languages are going to be more challenging. However, if you are a huge fan of things like anime, manga, and Japanese pop-culture in general, you are going to be more likely to stick with learning Japanese better than with most other languages.

[OZwizard64]

haha, yes Steve I agree...learn something in short time is always misleading:)