I watched two videos on how polyglots learn languages.
The US Military
The first looked at how the USA military trains those in the armed forces, , army, navy and air force, including doctors, interpreters, engineers, rescuers and others, to speak the language like a local.
The first thing we learned was which languages are easiest, with the shortest number of weeks of training. The European languages French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. Next German and Indonesian. Later, other languages. The hardest are the Asian ones, Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
The recruits are rested on their ability to recognize shapes and patterns. If they pass this abstract test, they are then asked to submit three languages which they want to learn. These lists are compared with the military's needs.
No surprise there. But even the easiest languages require more than a year, 52 weeks, of study, a whole day, five days a week.
The amount of learning is pretty impressive, too. Homework an be a couple of hours spent learning 80 words, and using them in sentences. That makes my thoughts of learning one word a day, or ten words a day, look pretty paltry.
The importance of this video for me was that it showed you in detail how languages are learned. Not just a guesstimate on the number of hours, but practical training. How it is done for people who will be using it in real life.
What kept them going through all the intensity? The appreciation that they were being paid whilst learning a new language, a skill for life.
After that, something lighter, how polyglots had learned multiple languages, not under pressure from doing it for a living, and not having to use it afterwards in life and death situations.
Polyglots
The video
Polyglot systems
On youtube
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