Xmmm wrote:Xmmm wrote:Kamlari wrote:Never studied 30 minutes a day, it would drive me crazy. But I do remember Dr Arguelles saying somewhere that he spent 15 minutes a day on Russian for years.
http://foreignlanguageexpertise.com/
Dr. Arguelles had learnt Russian by simply fitting it into his schedule, studying for no more than 15 minutes a day, while pursuing other languages as well. After six months he felt ready for full immersion, and went to St. Petersburg to live with a family for a futher three months, but had then barely spoken it since. That was nearly twelve years ago. Last weekend I had several long conversations with Dr. Arguelles in Russian and despite occasional small grammar slips, I was amazed at the broad range of topics he felt comfortable discussing and the enormous vocabulary he had at his disposal.
http://rawlangs.com/2013/09/16/what-is-a-polyglot/
[Commentary from Xmmm: Это неправда. Я не верю этому.]
Arguelles seems like the straight-arrow type so I'm trying to think how it could be true:
1. He puts in about 50 hours over the course of six months with his 15 minute a day thing. Decides he likes Russian.
2. He goes to Russia for three months of full immersion -- and since he's Arguelles, full immersion means 15 hours a day. That would be 1350 hours.
So, okay that's 1400 hours. It's a little light, but maybe that gets him to C1 passive skills. Or maybe he did 18 hours a day. But how come he's fluent after twelve years of not speaking? That doesn't seem to square with the general accounts of productive skills dropping off fast when not used ...
I found one of Arguelles' posts on the HTLAL board. There's no indication he did three months of immersion in Russia, so that article I linked to seems to be flat out wrong.
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... PN=1&TPN=1
If I read this correct, Arguelles is saying that 15 minutes of Russian a day for five years is enough to learn the structure of the language and gain some conversational ability (B1?), but that if you really want to read well and dig in the language, etc. it will take one hour a day for five years. That sounds more reasonable.
FWIW, Steve Kaufmann learned Russian in one hour a day for five years and to me his passive skills seem like C1, and his speaking is maybe a B1+ or a weak B2. He clearly understands everything that is being said to him, but he hesitates in his responses and gets stuck looking for words.
Of course, the problem for this thread is that Japanese is a more difficult language to learn than Russian. So the estimates need to be doubled.