How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1
Hour
The apple is red. 苹果是红色的。 La pomme est rouge.
It is John’s apple. 这是约翰的苹果。 C'est la pomme de John.
I give John the apple. 我把苹果给了约翰。 Je donne la pomme à
John.
We give him the 我们把苹果给了他。
apple. Nous lui donnons la
他把苹果给了约翰。 pomme.
He gives it to John.
她把苹果给了他。 Il la donne à John.
She gives it to him.
Elle la lui donne.
These six sentences alone expose much of the language, and quite a few
potential deal killers.
First, they help me to see if and how verbs are conjugated based on speaker
(both according to gender and number). I’m also able to immediately identify
an uber-pain in some languages: placement of indirect objects (John), direct
objects (the apple), and their respective pronouns (him, it). I would follow these
sentences with a few negations (“I don’t give…”) and different tenses to see if
these are expressed as separate words (“bu” in Chinese as negation, for
example) or verb changes (“-nai” or “-masen” in Japanese), the latter making a
language much harder to crack.
Second, I’m looking at the fundamental sentence structure: is it subject-verb-
object (SVO) like English and Chinese (“I eat the apple”), is it subject-object-
verb (SOV) like Japanese (“I the apple eat”), or something else? If you’re a
native English speaker, SOV will be harder than the familiar SVO, but once you
pick one up (Korean grammar is almost identical to Japanese, and German has
a lot of verb-at-the-end construction), your brain will be formatted for new SOV
languages.
Third, the first three sentences expose if the language has much-dreaded noun
cases. What are noun cases? In German, for example, “the” isn’t so simple. It
might be der, das, die, dem, den and more depending on whether “the apple”
is an object, indirect object, possessed by someone else, etc. Headaches
galore. Russian is even worse. This is one of the reasons I continue to put it off.
All the above from just 6-10 sentences! Here are two more:
I must give it to him. 我必须把它给他。 Je dois la lui donner.
I want to give it to her. 我想把它给她。 Je veux la lui donner.
I must give it to him.
I want to give it to her.
These two are to see if auxiliary verbs exist, or if the end of the each verb
changes. A good short-cut to independent learner status, when you no longer
need a teacher to improve, is to learn conjugations for “helping” verbs like “to
want,” “to need,” “to have to,” “should,” etc. In Spanish and many others, this
allows you to express yourself with “I need/want/must/should” + the infinite of
any verb. Learning the variations of a half dozen verbs gives you access to all
verbs. This doesn’t help when someone else is speaking, but it does help get
the training wheels off self-expression as quickly as possible.
If these auxiliaries are expressed as changes in the verb (often the case with
Japanese) instead of separate words (Chinese, for example), you are in for a
rough time in the beginning.
Ed in ultimo, per dimostrare una competernza del linguaggio (comment al blog
di Lucrezia)
Se avessi avuto 如果我有足够的钱，我就会买吸尘器。 Si j'avais eu assez
abbastanza soldi, avrei d'argent, j'aurais acheté
comprato l'aspirateur.
l’aspirapolvere.
Tim Ferriss' "13 sentences" in
French.
1. The apple is red. - La pomme est rouge.
2. It is John’s apple. - C’est la pomme de John.
3. I give John the apple. - Je donne la pomme à John.
4. We give him the apple. - On lui donne la pomme.
5. He gives it to John. - Il la donne à John.
6. She gives it to him. - Elle la lui donne.
7. I must give it to him. - Je dois la lui donner.
8. I want to give it to her. - Je veux la lui donner.
9. I’m going to know tomorrow. - Je le saurai demain. / Je vais le savoir demain
10.I can’t eat the apple. - Je ne peux pas manger la pomme.
11.I have eaten the apple. - J'ai mangé la pomme.
[Link] the apple red? - Est-ce que la pomme est rouge ? / Elle est rouge, la pomme ?
[Link] apples are red. - Les pommes sont rouges.
[Link] apple was red. - La pomme était rouge.
[Link] was John’s apple. - C’était la pomme de John.
16.I gave John the apple. - J'ai donné la pomme à John.
[Link] gave him the apple. - On lui a donné la pomme.
[Link] gave it to John. - Il l’a donné à John.
[Link] gave it to him. - Elle (la) lui a donnée.
20.I had to give it to him. - Je devais lui donner.
21.I wanted to give it to her. - Je voulais lui donner.
22.I was going to know yesterday. - J'allais savoir hier.
23.I couldn’t eat the apple. - Je ne pouvais pas manger la pomme
24.I had eaten the apple. - J'avais mangé la pomme
[Link] the apple red ? - Est-ce que la pomme était rouge ?
[Link] apples were red. - Les pommes étaient rouges
[Link] I have the apple? Puis-je avoir la pomme ? / Je peux avoir la pomme ?
La mela è rossa? E’ rossa la mela? 苹果是红色的吗？
Le mele sono rosse. 苹果是红色的。
Mangio la mela. 我吃了苹果。
Lo saprò domani. 我明天会知道的。
Voglio dargliela. 我想把它交给她。
Devo darla a lui. 我必须把它交给他。
Gli abbiamo dato la mela. 我们给他苹果。
