not unless you are a savant.

re OP: hahaha

You'd be doing very well to get 3kyuu in 3 months.
Nice troll.

Yeah, impossible. You can learn to recognize and write all the kanji in that time, maybe even learn their on'yomi using something like the movie method. But at the same time learning 10 000 words? XD No, not going to happen. You'd have to spend every waking moment just doing that, you'd have no time to exposure yourself. No exposure = No listening nor reading comprehension. Physically impossible.

Wheew, I don't know what to say.

I don't know about you, but for me, memorizing vocabulary is a process. You need to forget and remember each word again and again many times, until it "cooks".

In 3 months you can get enough of it in your head, but you won't get enough of the forgeting/remembering for each item.

Also you need to build your listening and link the vocabulary to the sounds.

So the actual work is more than just putting 13000 cards on your SRS. You gotta experience the process.

Last edited by mentat_kgs (2009 June 01, 8:38 am)

Nowadays, with the latest learning tools and techniques, combined with superb mental strength, my guess is the answer is no. But I would not discourage anyone from giving it a serous go. Mr. Heisig faced the same resistance in his day. What he did in one month was not considered doable; he met with shock and disbelief. And now,  !00 kanji a day is accepted as tough but realistic in this forum. I know a few students of Chinese who say it's "physically impossible" for a Western adult to memorise that many characters and a basic English meaning at that rate.

Didn't the KGB teach a foreign language fluently, from scratch, in six month? I hear Putin's German in amazing.  Waking up at 4 am everyday  with a cold sweat at the prospect of  a Siberian work camp must really focus minds.

Doable or not, some  people like to push themselves. Not everyone is into "enjoying the process". Six months, on the other hand...

Tobberoth wrote:

But at the same time learning 10 000 words? XD No, not going to happen. You'd have to spend every waking moment just doing that, you'd have no time to exposure yourself.

They're not 10 000 words. They're less than 8000. (I don't know why they say 10,000!)

In average, one can learn 300 words if the language is distant linguistically, or 1000 if it is in the same language family.

It means that one needs 1 month to learn that amount of vocabulary and 2 months for review.

It doesn't need more than 3-5 hours/day.

Jeromin wrote:

Nowadays, with the latest learning tools and techniques, combined with superb mental strength, my guess is the answer is no. But I would not discourage anyone from giving it a serous go. Mr. Heisig faced the same resistance in his day. What he did in one month was not considered doable; he met with shock and disbelief. And now,  !00 kanji a day is accepted as tough but realistic in this forum. I know a few students of Chinese who say it's "physically impossible" for a Western adult to memorise that many characters and a basic English meaning at that rate.

Didn't the KGB teach a foreign language fluently, from scratch, in six month? I hear Putin's German in amazing.  Waking up at 4 am everyday  with a cold sweat at the prospect of  a Siberian work camp must really focus minds.

Doable or not, some  people like to push themselves. Not everyone is into "enjoying the process". Six months, on the other hand...

"some  people like to push themselves."

that s what i m talking about....
of course the average guy is unable to learn at this pace....except the average guy is mediocre in a lot of ways  : even the simplest  task  are performed in a poor way  ; sleeping , eating , speaking  even breathing can be dramatically improved.... 10 times out of 10 average just means mediocre.
we've got now a lot of extremely powerful tools available for free or a very cheap price (compared to what the language school are asking you) on internet. Except all of them needs to be dedicated . Awareness , mental strenght , focus are not for sale . If you don't like to sweat then nobody can do it for you . I agree that in 3 months you've got to sweat a lot .... but as long as somebody proved it's impossible physically   I won't acknowledge it . I just admit nobody did it before . So what ? 
I'm all the more surprised of the global reaction than everyone here follow heisig and most of us ajatt   both method having met the same skepticism ... common guys! where is your open mindedness ? if heisig or khatz had gave in to this kind of consideration we would'nt be here.

Last edited by ghinzdra (2009 June 01, 10:40 am)

People are sarcastic because this is an internet forum. If this is your first one, you may want to explore others. It's simply inevitable that people will be asses because you can't see their faces. See! Even I'm being a smartass *right now*. Don't be too harsh on them.. it's really hard to avoid.

kyotokanji wrote:

Or 1000 words of German or French etc for an English speaker!! I can't believe that for one moment. There are moments where it's good to say "Great idea, do what you can" but the suggestion of 300 Japanese words a day is not quite right.

Oh yeah ???
so mark my words :in 1991 Bruce Balmer at the memoriad event (world championship memory) learned 2000 foreign words in 18 hours....
and dominic ferris learned 320 german words in one hour  and he apparently did something similar in chinese except I can't get my hand on the datas.

"Blondie like" :There are two kind of people in this world my friend : those who think it's impossible until someone else do it and those who do it.

kazelee wrote:

ghinzdra wrote:

that s what i m talking about....
of course the average guy is unable to learn at this pace....except the average guy is mediocre in a lot of ways  : even the simplest  task  are performed in a poor way  ; sleeping , eating , speaking  even breathing can be dramatically improved.... 10 times out of 10 average just means mediocre.
we've got now a lot of extremely powerful tools available for free or a very cheap price (compared to what the language school are asking you) on internet. Except all of them needs to be dedicated . Awareness , mental strenght , focus are not for sale . If you don't like to sweat then nobody can do it for you . I agree that in 3 months you've got to sweat a lot .... but as long as somebody proved it's impossible physically   I won't acknowledge it . I just admit nobody did it before . So what ? 
I'm all the more surprised of the global reaction than everyone here follow heisig and most of us ajatt   both method having met the same skepticism ... common guys! where is your open mindedness ? if heisig or khatz had gave in to this kind of consideration we would'nt be here.

Vocab and kanji aside. Grammar and listening would be utter murder. Grammar can't be crammed. The mind has to adjust to it over time. Even if you mastered the concepts on an intellectual level, you'd waste time on the test as you try to apply the information you've gathered and slowly decode the meaning of each sentence.

The ear has to be trained, not only to hear vocab but recognize the grammar. Even if you managed to learn every word necessary, how could readily discern, by ear, the plethora of similar words and master their individual and or unique usages.

It's very possible to memorize large amounts of information. The difficulty lies in the application. I'm one of the most optimistic people you'll ever meet and I have to say, this is beyond pushing it, lol.

Cardinal mezzofanti lived in 19 th century and he spoke perfectly 28 languages with all their dialects and 38 fluently  according to the various testimony of travellers who came from all over the world to challenge him  http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/ … table.html .... I bet big money that once you have the method there isn't more difficulty in learning "grammar" than learning "vocabulary" .  Sure he did have more time than mere 3 time but you can find some account of the level of mastery he could reach within an extremely short time :Byron, in his "Travels in Italy" refers the story of how Mezzofanti mastered one language in 48 hours, without prior knowledge of it and give a whole paragraph with authorities ans witnesses for such a feat, finishing by telling that he
himself asked the Cardinal about it. In Russell's biography you will find testimony of how he dedicated 15 hours to sardo (from the island of Sardinia) and could mastered it. And there's another story about two criminals whose language Mezzofanti was able
to learn overnight .... I agree that the exact level of mastery has still to be determined but most of the witness were brilliant minds , the kind of which you won't deceive by poor tricks and who have high standards ....If we put aside the vocabulary issue (already tackled before ), I can infer from this speed that mezzofanti had  developed an ability to get over grammar at light speed...


And mezzofanti didn't have all the powerful tool available now ....

But as I already said I acknowledge it's not a challenge for the average guy .

Last edited by ghinzdra (2009 June 01, 11:22 am)

ghinzdra wrote:

...uberman sleep and all this stuff... pavlina and other guys have sucessfuly tried this kind of method to cut down on the sleep without any side effect on a long term ... which means 21H of activity a day and once functionnal needs are fulfilled at least 17 hours remain for something like learning a language...

There have been no studies on the long term effects of polyphasic sleep, so you can't say 'without any side effect.' For all we know polyphasic sleepers could drop dead 10 years after starting.

Of all the polyphasic sleeper's testimonials I've read, none of them were memorising large amounts of information at the same time. 7-8 hours of sleep helps a lot for moving stuff to long term memory, and I haven't seen any anecdotes to suggest that polyphasic sleep can replace this aspect with similar results.

I'd love to be proved wrong, I think polyphasic sleep is a fascinating concept, but I'd caution against telling people there are no side effects when we really don't know.

ghinzdra wrote:

I bet big money that once you have the method there isn't more difficulty in learning "grammar" than learning "vocabulary" .

Memorizing grammar rules and understanding grammar are two different things.

ghinzdra wrote:

Sure he did have more time than mere 3 time but you can find some account of the level of mastery he could reach within an extremely short time :Byron, in his "Travels in Italy" refers the story of how Mezzofanti mastered one language in 48 hours, without prior knowledge of it and give a whole paragraph with authorities ans witnesses for such a feat, finishing by telling that he
himself asked the Cardinal about it. In Russell's biography you will find testimony of how he dedicated 15 hours to sardo (from the island of Sardinia) and could mastered it. And there's another story about two criminals whose language Mezzofanti was able
to learn overnight .... I agree that the exact level of mastery has still to be determined but most of the witness were brilliant minds , the kind of which you won't deceive by poor tricks and who have high standards ....If we put aside the vocabulary issue (already tackled before ), I can infer from this speed that mezzofanti had  developed an ability to get over grammar at light speed...

He had an absurd repertoire to draw from.  Also, I think Spanish and Mexican are the same language.. could be wrong though, what with it being the 19th century and all.

nm.
Think you meant to post this as well.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/ … lated.html


Note: It took him four months alone (of uninterrupted study) to get a grasp of Chinese (hinted that it was due to the writing system). This was after a failure 2-3 years earlier. Four months (and some change) for Chinese, the language most people thought was impossible at the time.

He then looked at Japanese and was like, no f#$ing way I'm going through that again! LOL jk. But imagine if he'd tackled Japanese first.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/ … study.html

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/ … inese.html

ghinzdra wrote:

And mezzofanti didn't have all the powerful tool available now ....

But as I already said I acknowledge it's not a challenge for the average guy .

It's not a challenge for the above average or even the gifted. This guy was a freak of nature (and he struggled to learn the Chinese). Either that or the suppos'ed brilliant minds of the time were actually morons.

Last edited by kazelee (2009 June 01, 12:43 pm)