Splatted wrote:

vileru wrote:

I'd also like to comment on those praising the smoothness of Benny's speech. Most of you probably have a much larger vocabulary and grammar knowledge than him. If you just focused on speaking without interruptions, instead of trying to focus on producing grammatically correct sentences and phrases, I'm sure most of you could easily replicate his results. Benny speaks so effortlessly not so much because of his learning and practice, but because of his character. If you want to speak with the kind of comfort and abandon that Benny embodies, lowering your inhibitions will help more than any amount of studying.

That's pretty much what Benny says...

In that case, it only serves to prove the criticisms that his grammar and pronunciation are lacking. Of course, this strategy works quite well if communicating is your only goal. You'll be understood despite your ungrammatical and unnatural expressions. However, I think most of us aim to communicate like native speakers. And to pursue this goal, sufficient exposure to the language and adequate understanding of its grammar are essential.

Let's get to the bottom of the issue, though. The clash between Benny and his critics isn't really about how skilled he is at speaking Chinese, but rather between their value systems. From Benny's perspective, communication takes precedence and language skill is measured by one's ability to communicate. To his detractors, proficiency takes precedence and language skill is measured by how well can mimic native speakers. Obviously, these values are based on their contrasting goals. Benny wants to talk to people. On the other hand, his critics generally want to master the language, often with the intent of permanent residency and employment. The learning methods favored by each reflect their particular value systems. And I'm sure most here would agree that the methods of both groups are effective for their respective goals.

Last edited by vileru (2012 April 29, 9:28 am)

The OP is a year old, people were discussing some guys claim about learning Chinese in 3 months.

On the 3 months to fluency site, my Avast virus checker popped up with a notification that a malicious url had been blocked (http://eukarnold.in[string of numbers].)  I have no idea what this means or this is useful info for others. (Nothing showed up in Google). Can I assume it's safe for me to visit the site knowing Avast will block this kind of thing?

The average European or American (the continent) can learn any Romance or Germanic language in 4 months (I know, because I have, through a very basic study of pronunciation and grammar followed by reading and writing my way to fluency), and pretty much any Indo-European language in 6 months. And by "learn" I mean the ability to understand the spoken word and read any text (except maybe James Joyce's Ulysses) at normal pace and with full understanding, and writing (with the help of a spell checker) that can easily fool a native speaker. As far as speaking, fluency would be a bit unrealistic. I think the ability to speak varies from person to person much more than the other aspects of learning a language.

With Japanese, Mandarin, etc. I'd have to go with 9 months at a minimum. Half to get to a point where you can read and write the most frequently used words (which would allow you to understand most of what you read), and the second half spent reading and writing to learn the rest, same as with any language. At the halfway point, you're basically where an American who's learning French is at when he starts.

I guess that if you have had prior exposure to Japanese, then you can possibly do it in 6 months. And all this presupposes prior language studying experience. If you've never studied a foreign language before, then that's another three months added on (for languages that are sufficiently foreign: for learning French, I doubt it makes any difference - to learn French, all you'd need to do is pick up a dozen French books and about 50 movies, sit down and read the books with a dictionary in hand, then watch the movies, and you're done - if you have the willpower to do it in four months, then you can no matter who you are)