Your theory is spot on. Let’s say if you have to learn a new language, how are you going to approach it based on your method?
@asad100101:
For some reason I only see “import” in your comment so I’m replying to myself instead.
How would I approach a new language?
- Get a bunch of mp3s matching the 3,000 most common frequency words spoken in the target language
- Create an anki deck
- export that 3,000 words into a text file
- import the text file into lingQ so I have a baseline to “click” each time I “learn” a word in anki
- learn the words in anki till I hit 2,000 words
- to stop myself from slitting my wrists with boredom for the approx 2-3 months it takes to cram the 2,000 words in, I would click through the various mini stories in lingQ to pass the time.
- after 3,000 words in anki I would start adding grammar constructions out of lingQ mini stories as mp3s at the end of the 3,000
- at 3,000 words start watching youtube videos in target language at A1 and keep on repeatedly clicking through linqQ ministories to learn grammar by osmosis
- gradually move from A1 to A2 to B1 to B2 youtubers as I start to understand more. e.g. in french in was alice ayel, then innerfrench, then solange te parle then cyprien then squeezie (target). import the transcripts into lingQ so I can catch up on the missing vocab from the youtubers I don’t know.
- continue until “challenge met” (either six months or until I could understand generally the target youtuber) - in the case of french the target youtuber was “squeezie”
For some reason, I only see “import” in your comment so I’m replying to you under this post.
In those three months, I wonder if you go through all the mini-stories and other courses aimed for Beginner 2 and intermediate level or maybe a novel or two, without using Anki, what are the chances that you will “accumulate” all those 3000 common words by osmosis. Because I purchased an audiobook of “2000 common words” in German and to my surprise, I could recognize all of them and even those which were used in example sentences. By that time I read a couple of novels and did some courses aimed at beginner and intermediate levels along with mini-stories.
In terms of developing grammar constructions, perhaps I have waited for too long like for 16 months to start sentence mining in Anki. I should have started a bit earlier?
So far my approach has been all listening-like yours. Whatever I read here at LingQ I also listened to the corresponding text. For a couple of thousand hours it should be listening heavy (even if you are reading you should combine it with audio).
Your speaking is directly tied to strong listening skills. I asked an 85-year-old lady where my student hostel is located - is my German getting better?
She said she could understand me effortlessly. At this point, I had already spent 2300 hours of active listening.
@asad100101
Same here I can only see “import” so replying to myself again.
You wrote:
“In those three months, I wonder if you go through all the mini-stories and other courses aimed for Beginner 2 and intermediate level or maybe a novel or two, without using Anki, what are the chances that you will “accumulate” all those 3000 common words by osmosis.”
Don’t get me wrong. Intellectually I think it will work. Steve Kaufmann does it. It’s an emotional thing. I know my method works and I roughly know the timeline.
I don’t know the timeline for doing it completely with lingQ and if I’m honest it “feels” wrong somehow. Written words seem artificial as a contextual basis on which to hang the concepts. I believe forming my own mental images and hanging the sound of the words on those is better. I might be wrong but I don’t have the experience of doing only lingQ to know.
“Because I purchased an audiobook of “2000 common words” in German and to my surprise, I could recognize all of them and even those which were used in example sentences.”
How long did it take though? My issue with trying to use lingQ is unless you try to actively recall (which is what anki does) it’s essentially using passive learning which is less efficient than active for rapid learning. So although I believe it will work (eventually), I’m not convinced that just by reading over and over ONLY will you accumulate the vocabulary anywhere near as fast.
Conversely, SRS IMO is useless for grammar. Grammar is definitely the thing you can accumulate by osomis, which is why I’m delighted to have found lingQ. I think lingQ is awesome. Just I don’t think it’s awesome for the reasons that are being stated.
“So far my approach has been all listening-like yours. Whatever I read here at LingQ I also listened to the corresponding text. For a couple of thousand hours it should be listening heavy (even if you are reading you should combine it with audio).”
Agreed. I barely pay attention to the written words themselves. They are placeholders to click on so I can hear the sounds.
“She said she could understand me effortlessly. At this point, I had already spent 2300 hours of active listening.”
Good job. You should be getting pretty close to fluent by now, no?
Hello Mischa!
I figured the following.
As with all cognitive skills the resulting rectangle certainly needs
a length of nature (complex innate factors)
and
a width of nurture (motivation, method, confidence, experience, hard work and time spent).
NATURE:
Language acquisition looks to me like a cognitive skill that is quite universal and roughly equal in almost all homo sapiens. Like for example the skill of driving vehicals, it seems to be very weakly related to general intelligence (g), which is the genetic factor underlying IQ tests.
As Qui Gon Jin once said to Jar Jar Binks in 1999: “The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.”
Qui Gon meets Jar Jar Binks | Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)
But here’s the crux:
Level of understanding reached as well as production and performance in any foreign languages, will not be higher than performance and understanding in the native language.
Consider that the CEFR scale is not a progression towards “native”, but rather a progression of being educated, intelligent, and effective in a particular language. C2 then doesn’t mean native-like, it means being able to perform what the definition says:
Therefore there are clearly people who are absolutely native speakers, yet they may only score a B2 on any CEFR exam in their native languages. Leaving aside that there are also people who don’t have one clear native language. Reversely there are non-natives who may score a C2 in a foreign L, yet the perfect accent or other complexities still escape them and identify them as non-native.
Please refer to these two most enlightening videos on language matters:
Stephen Krashen, an Interview - Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve
A functional illiterate, who doesn’t read well in their L1, will have a hard time reaching something like a C1 in an L2, for reasons both innate and environmental.
Also I’d like to share this most interesting and brilliant old programme about how well gorillas can learn sign language:
A Conversation With Koko The Gorilla Full Documentary
Amazing!
American comedian Bill Burr has done good work popularizing Koko The Gorilla! Audio not ideal, but it’s the complete bit:
Bill Burr, talking gorilla
NURTURE:
As Krashen explained in the lingosteve interview, most people used to be stuck believing in the “skill building hypothesis” of L aquisistion. Trying to learn languages like school maths by effortful control, squeezing it through the conscious slow ‘System 2’.
Once someone fundamentally understands the primordial truth of the input hypothesis, and learns to trust more in the low effort and faster ‘System 1’, they have the cornerstone of knowing that LingQ is the way to go.
My life story in short for context:
From shaky B1 school English, I learned it well, incidentally by the LingQ input method of reading books, watching movies, series, and about 9000h of THE SIMPSONS (Yes, you can tell it did its damage :P), while simply pausing and looking up words at every fuzzy word.
Then I found LingQ and gradually warmed up from easy to hard, doing Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese. I don’t think I would have believed in cracking Chinese as a first or second, but by the time I did Chinese my confidence was bombastic enough to just run with it. Although it’d be a long road to a C level, and my former B2 has probably decayed into a B1.
An Anglo learning Chinese as his first L2, or anything other than Romano-Germanic neighbourhood dialects, is definitely on a respectable quest.
Pronunciation accuracy is a rather superficial talent, that overly impresses people, while not being the most meanigful thing. I personally am a bit of a joker, who likes to playact around with accents, and I think I am extremely high in personality trait ‘Openness’. Therefore I think I tend to be good at accents, which usually gives people the impression that my level is better than it is.
CONCLUSIO:
Language acquisition is a universal human skill, roughly equal among almost all, hardly g-related. Yet ultimate, effective level of understanding and performance will be limited by the level in the native languages.
Therefore, no matter how much intelligent language learners such as are gatheres on this thread may want to deny their IQ in fake humility, they are both right and wrong in this. The quesiton is a complex sucker, but since IQ = processing speed of the brain, it obviously plays a role in the speed of acquisition, grammar accuracy, accent accuaracy, etc.
Daniel Tammet was mentioned, who is obviously a high-functioning autist-savant with probably IQ ~150.
This is my amateur take.
“”“So my theory is that learning an “alien” language is doable”“”
Reminds me of the Babbel ads. Now THAT is some fun marketing!
Babbel: An Alien Abroad - Full Length (120s) (2018)
“”“Where it falls down is when guys like Benny Lewis say you can learn any language in 3 months. Doubt it. “””
I personally won’t blast Benny Lewis anymore as I did in the past, because he seems to have been humbled by Karma in the last two years:
Whatever happened to Benny Lewis? A personal update
May The 道 forgive him, and may he be at inner peace.
He was a raging young guy, who thought he would 90-day visa travel forever, and named his whole product with an unsustainable, short-sighted name. And his “just speak” and toxic positivity, he once admitted, were overcompensation for his nerdy poindexter uni days.
Living in Spain and with a school background in German, he started out swiping up all these western European languages to small talk levels and then, lacking perspective, thought it all just takes 3 months. Then around 2013 he tried in succession the gigaprojects CHINESE JAPANESE ARABIC and got his expectation adjusted downward by those experiences, while trying to frame his way out of failures afterwards.
After that his projects fizzled out into unreal ones like having his gf step in and try Russian, and commiting spousal abuse by making her read, speak, and listen to Esperanto. 
Benny coaches a monoglot to learn Esperanto: Week 1 (with En/Eo subtitles)
For me Benny’s downfalls in language promises, as well as some other aspects of life, were a good amateur-psychological study and a lesson, that faking your way through life with toxic positivity and not adressing your demons and weaknesses honestly, will only get you so far until the hard wall of reality smacks you in the face. But he had some fun along the way, so that’s cool.
@ S.I.
“”“If you’re a human species, you already are exactly that kind of animal, thas has this particular talent, that has been genetically determined by history of natural selection. But sometimes it seems, that somehow some of us have dodged the evolution :D”“”
Exactly right! Though I would call attention to the fact that we have all been dodging what Prof. Eddolf Duttler the Naughty Heretic may call “purifying harsh Darwinian selection” for about 200 years.
Unlike laymen, who mistake evolution as a progressive process trending always towards more complexity and traits we value, like intelligence, you are of course aware, as a highly intelligent person, that:
- evolution works on mutation and by selection,
- the overwhelming majority of mutations are detrimental, because they are simply copying mistakes,
- it is only by harsh, purifying selection pressures that organisms evolve into any possible direction.
Therefore, with harsh selection gone since about 1800, we in the human species now have:
- remnant normal humans, with low mutational load and good genetic health, who would have survived under Darwinian conditions
and - humans with various levels of high mutational load in body and the bodypart brain, who would not have survived under Darwinian conditions.
I agree with you that many people dodging evolution does have disadvantages and that this may create lots of trouble going forward in time. And that shutting our eyes to this while virtue-signalling about how all people are the same and wonderful, overstating environment and understating genetics may be part of that problem.
Though no matter what people with schizo-feminized brains may believe, I personally wouldn’t advocate annihilation camps and breeding programs to artificially and brutally interfere by state-force. Neither does Prof. Eddolf Duttler.
Please refer to these productions by Prof. Naughty at your leasure:
Why Are Intelligent People Conformist But Super-Intelligent People Non-Conformist?
How We Allowed Intolerant Neurotics to Become Parasites off Society
How Genetic Changes Explain Why the West is So Utterly Polarized
Why the Flynn Effect Is An Illusion and We Are Becoming Less Intelligent
If anyone wants to brush up on their evolutionary theory, I can recommend this great freely available book, that starts basic, but covers a lot of ground:
The Red Queen Full Audiobook
In conclusion.
To quote Maggie Simpson:
“This is indeed a disturbing universe.”
That’s my boy!
I clicked the like button several times so Zoran will probably deliver them after he cancel a bunch of memberships.
My line about evolution was a simplification for sure 
Anthropologists’ observation: our brain evolved drastically fast from pithecuses to first of sapiens, but it has degenerated, or at least has lost its mass 12 times faster since first of sapiens to us. And is getting smaller right now through generations. So it’s true in the end, that it was better before!
Source?
Originally, I got to know this, when was watching one of the lectures of Drobishevskiy (Дробышевский).
Russian anthropologist and a popularizer of science. Highly reccommend his lectures, it’s a mixture of detailed knowledge and stand-up-like humor, a very funny view on the daily life of our ancestors.
I can’t now point out the lecture when I picked up this thing about the brain, but I just easily got googled another article:
Interesting, thank you. However, let me point out that the conclusion doesn’t seem to be so certain. The main original research paper quoted in the article, and which is also the one I’ve found in a (admittedly brief) google scholar search, states:
Still interesting but way less dramatic than the article states. Also, no data about current brain size reduction. All quoted research compares changes along the holocene era.
Besides, the paper states:
So, I wonder what happens to brain:body ratio, which is often considered to be a more predictive measure of cognitive ability.
Again, it’s an interesting piece of data but I don’t think it allows us to make any clear conclusions about a possible decline in intelligence. The original article itself seems to state as much.
[Edit] To answer my own question, at least one paper shows that brain reduction is larger than expected from body mass reduction:
This other article gives reason to doubt the relationship between brain size and even encephalization index and intelligence, by comparing humand and equine changes in brain size. It concludes that it has more to do with
This conclusion is in line with that of the article I mentioned above.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1440-1681.1998.tb02289.x
I don’t have my own opinion for that matter, actually. But mr. Drobishevskiy keeps claiming that comparing to the average brain mass of first sapiens, there was a reduction. He has said this on several occasions while he’s definitely aware of things like encephalization index, ratio, etc. Maybe It’s just a cool punchline to say on occasion and the conclusion isn’t certain
But in the same time, it’s safe to say, that selection isn’t going under the same conditions, that have led to growth of the brain. I don’t know, what selection is present today? By cars? By followers on Instagram?
Yeah, that’s the million dollar question. Is the human being evolving now? How? What evolutionary pressures are there?
Спасибо еще раз за информацию. Будет интересным смотреть лекции С. Дробышевского и, конечно же, это отличная практика русского языка.
@ S.I.
@ Señor Francisco “I do univeristy research” Granadez
I’ll look at the Drobishevskiy stuff later, but I really think this discussion about braincase volume decreasing over that much more ancient time-depth doesn’t have anything to do with the more recent phenomenon I hinted at. Looks like Drobishevsky is about neotenization ~= gracilization, brain/body volume ratios changing, without a necessary relationship to the internal complexity of the grey matter.
It’s really quite simple. Please refer to this bombastically great and goofy comedy movie, that they wouldn’t get away with making today, with the sad, troubling understanding that real idiocracy is coming to our grandchildren, and will be less jolly than this movie, and unfortunately much more violent and dangerous. I’ll leave it to you to think of certain countries in the world today.
IDIOCRACY 2005
Example of a real one …maybe:
AFRIKAANS ACTIVIST WILLEM PETZER DISCUSSES SOUTH AFRICA’S COLLAPSE INTO ANARCHY
Once you understand this fugly truth, a lot will become clear on The Path of enlightenment.
And then many nihilistic, individualistic, narcissistic people, will have to face an existentialist crash in the fact that they have never thought or acted enough in any of the two main planes of life:
- the spiritual, philosophical dimension of honest enlightenment
- the materialist, darwinian dimension of whose great-grandchildren will rule Mars / or the slums of violent chaos, respectively.
Imagine the type of person, who doesn’t understand that Idiocracy is real, by simply once walking out of their traffic-sign research in Universidad de Paella in Al-Andalus, having lived 50+ years and read some history and literature from A.D. 1850 to 2020.
To answer the question “Is the human being evolving now?”: contraceptive methods, viruses, famines, wars, inoculation with religion vs nihilist individualism, etc. etc. etc.
JF GARIÉPY - NO, NATURAL SELECTION HASN’T STOPPED IN HUMANS, THOUGHTY2
Also: Prof. Eric Kaufmann
http://www.sneps.net/publications/publications
For more understanding about credentialist academic windbags, who need a “source” on everything, that most working class IQ 90 people with two eyes to see know by instinct, please refer to this enlightening video and also search “mid-wit memes”, not forgetting to take some of them with a big pinch of salt 
The Psychology and Rise of the Mid-Wit
You know.
The general type of person, one of whose big concerns in life is raising the question if old-fashioned terms and inaccurate thoughts on some ethnic groups in old literature should be censored, and thinking that this makes them look awfully profound and moral:
Never mind real problems in the world, and real helping based on reality, while humbly shutting your piehole about it, as most moral sages in history have suggested.
To understand the virtue-signalling, hypocrite, coward, racist, conformist liar type of person, and why they need to be stopped, please refer to these transmissions from our succinct “nutsi” friend Eddy McDutt:
Why Virtue-Signallers Are psychopaths and “Ethics” is Just Emotional Manipulation
Leftists Are Motivated by Self-Interest and Envy, NOT Compassion: The Evidence
Why All Left Wing People Are Raging Liars
Never forget, what Master Sun said in the Art of War:
知彼知己，百战不殆
Know enemy
Know self
hundred battles
no danger
But like the Noble Quran incessantly says:
And as for the disbelievers, theirs will be a severe chastizement on a day about which there is no doubt.
Johnny Cash - God’s Gonna Cut You Down (Official Music Video)
Hope this makes interesting food for thought my lingqing friends!
Cheerio!
I’ll stay on the side of those who check the data by reading and criticizing actual research.
You can stay on the side of those who think in terms of your political bias and use insults, parrot internet expressions and quote videos by alt-right youtubers as a replacement for thinking
That’s not my boy anymore! That’s Joseph Stalin’s boy
You’re desperately caught in a political discourse and getting triggered by anything. As if still there is Tom the human somwhere, but for now it’s some fungus taking control of the Tom’s body and mind (and the LingQ account) and pushing him aggressively to the crowd, when it can spread its spores. Meanwhile somwhere another human is getting pushed in the opposite direction by alt-left fungus.
If you’re still alive, blink two times.
@ S.I. my boi
You seem like a good guy.
Joe Stalin is not at all my boi, since I have indicated that I am not inclined towards artificial and brutal interference in things by state force. Maybe you want to watch thoroughly my boi and cult-leader Ed, Professor of heresy, before being fast with inacurrate assumptions.
I wouldn’t agree that I “getting triggered by anything”.
If by “triggered” you mean worried and frustrated on a rational and empirical basis, then I would agree that I am getting ever so slightly triggered by my Vienna being changed into Beirut (that I was lucky to visit for 3 weeks in 2019) by hypocritical lying narcissists like Professor Traffic Sign.
If you don’t understand what the problems with this are, I respectfully call your attention to the links provided and encourage long and deep meditation on these matters.
What you maybe don’t know, is that I have seen the ugly face of Francisco on this forum before. And I just happen to have the evidence saved!
He will hear from the Inquisition of the Imperator, when the time comes. :PP
@ Francisco El Racista
“”“I’ll stay on the side of those who check the data by reading and criticizing actual research.”“”
Would be great if you started doing that. Better late than never.
I’ll leave it to intelligent observers to judge who lives in biased fantasyland parroting sophistry and empty phrases, and who thinks critically.
We know what you people are, Frankyboi. And if you think your empty phrase sophistry intimidates us, you’ve got another think coming.
I suggest you consume some of the information I have linked to, before you embarrass yourself further.
Whatever
He’s not blinking!
I don’t want to derail Mischa’s thread about talent too much. The poor guy.
But for people who like “”“those who check the data by reading and criticizing actual research”“”,
I can recommend this 2010 German book by “my boi” Thilo. The en Wiki article is a stump, please translate and research further.
The main thesis is that the excessive social welfare system (which as you know is an artificial, state-force program, of questionable morality) is having a significant dysgenic effect on the society, similar to what is suggested in the great comedy movie Idiocracy. In short, while the “educated” shrink their share for complex reasons, the underclasses are growing strongly. This is agravated by a political religion that wants to import foreign underclasses in bulk, which is an unfortunate aside for these foreign victims of very evil and/or stupid political forces.
The book is heavily data-driven, therefore a bit of a thick read. I read it a good while back. Maybe it is available to people in translation.
Please be aware, that most representations in regime-media or by very “concerned” commentators, overly focus on how the man is a royzyzt, because he thinks making Germany into an ethno-religiously splintered Bosnia/Lebanon may not be the best idea we ever had, because: corruption, crime, civil strife, unreliable systems, etc. as suggested in the Willem Petzer South Africa interview.
Steve read the book a long time ago as well and stated: “This is not a bad man. This is a man, who is worried about his country.”
Politische Korrektheit
And Franky Traffic, before you dare suggest I am a royzyzt again, look up the psychological bias of projection, which you should know:
For people who have a weakness in logical thinking or are under the spell of the current religion, I should stress, that the ethno-religious dimension, (which racists would call the race dimension), is an unfortunate aside in this larger problem, and that we don’t endorse violent, abrupt, artificial state-force as a solution to anything.
But hey. I should accept that you can’t fix stupid and there is no point in talking to disgusting, cowardly traitors, who have no relationship with the truth.
Thank you and good lingqing!
Please don’t bring politics to this forum. I respect that you believe what you believe but I don’t want to see it here. -1.