Tim Ferris method

[mercutio]

That's not even sufficient for English, as it doesn't even cover the continuous aspect (is/was/will be doing). "I must" isn't common in English. There's very little information about conjugation for person/number in what you get back.

Johnny 5 need input.

Yeah. It's for people who like to sound smart. You can impress your friends at parties. It's also a great selling point. You could say things like "There was this guy on a bus and he sat next to this foreigner. Using these 12 sentences he learnt another language by the end of the bus ride".

Not Ferriss related but I once read this article on a guy who claimed to learn some obscure language in like 24 hours (basically on a plane ride) and then strolled through a forest chatting about views on life with some village elder, unaided by dictionaries or interpreters. I don't recall the details but anyway its like an arms race to see who can come up with the most obscure 'one weird trick' and promise results in fantastically small amounts of time.

Yes, I guess I'm a little biased against it

I'm so tempted to write a book called "how to learn a language incredibly slowly and still be occasionally mediocre"

[sfuqua]

As I go through life, I have noticed that most things that seem unbelievable are not actually true.
With techniques like Shekhtman islands and the like, it is pretty simple to fake someone who doesn't speak the language into thinking that you can, and to a limited extent you can fake someone who does speak the language into thinking that you speak much better than you do. There are geniuses, and I'm not one, but there is no magic method, except perhaps for the one that you enjoy so much that you don't notice you are studying.

[smallwhite]

English Grammar for Speaking
Sentence Patterns to Help You Speak English Fluently!
http://www.teacherjoe.us/Grammar.html

"These are 100 of the most common English sentences. If you can say them perfectly, you will be able to use thousands of similar sentences when you speak English. Make these sentence a habit and your English conversations will be easier and more interesting."

[Seneca]

Maybe it is just me, but most of the "life-hacking" or digital nomad oriented stuff out there strikes me as a long con game existing just to generate some ad revenue.

[Marais]

A mon avis.

He, like Benny Lewis et al. is a charlatan.

Being able to say random basic things is no marker of fluency. I can read French. Am i fluent? No. Because when someone says the most basic shit to me in real life i have no idea what they're saying. My output is ok, i can get what i want and make my way. But i can't understand.

If you don't understand, you're a language fraud. That's what these travel-based internet 'polyglots' are doing. And yes, it is to get ad revenue on blogs and to sell books. Nothing more. Tim Ferris doesn't speak many languages to any great degree as far as i am aware. And if he does he didn't learn them with his 'method'.

The only way to tell is to plonk them into some unscripted conversation with a bunch of native speakers. Of course, they never do that, they merely give monologues or cleverly divert the conversation away without actually answering a question by picking up on key words and subtely changing the subject.

Language learning doesn't have a short cut. It's lots of hard work and years to become truly native-like fluent.

Getting by any language is easy if you want to be like a baby and say 'i want' 'i need' 'i'm hurt' 'where is..'.

The real acid test comes when you're in real life adult situations and need to deal with real adult problems and conversations.

These 'methods' are just hype to grab dollars off lazy people who want a fast-food way of learning.

[tomgosse]

A mon avis.
He, like Benny Lewis et al. is a charlatan.

Please be careful about calling someone a charlatan. The forum rules are quite explicit on this:

Libel and Defamation: Under UK defamation law (Defamation Act 2013), website operators can be pursued by those who claim they have been defamed as a result of comments on their site even if those operators are not the author of those comments. We hate receiving letters from Her Majesty's Government. This means we have a very strict set of rules against the use of libelous or defamatory remarks on this website and posts which are considered to be defamatory will be subject to immediate deletion and the poster will be sanctioned.

[Marais]

A mon avis.
He, like Benny Lewis et al. is a charlatan.

Please be careful about calling someone a charlatan. The forum rules are quite explicit on this:

Libel and Defamation: Under UK defamation law (Defamation Act 2013), website operators can be pursued by those who claim they have been defamed as a result of comments on their site even if those operators are not the author of those comments. We hate receiving letters from Her Majesty's Government. This means we have a very strict set of rules against the use of libelous or defamatory remarks on this website and posts which are considered to be defamatory will be subject to immediate deletion and the poster will be sanctioned.

Fair enough, but it makes for very shallow discussion if you can't say what you really think about someone.

Is 'they don't really speak many languages to a good level' a good enough substitute? Because that's what i meant.

[tomgosse]

A mon avis.
He, like Benny Lewis et al. is a charlatan.

Please be careful about calling someone a charlatan. The forum rules are quite explicit on this:

[b]
Fair enough, but it makes for very shallow discussion if you can't say what you really think about someone.

The administrators have asked us to err on the side of caution and refrain from personal attacks.

Is 'they don't really speak many languages to a good level' a good enough substitute? Because that's what i meant.

That is better. In my opinion, charlatan is about malicious motives and character, not about skills.

[Seneca]

Some topical reading from The New Yorker and The Guardian:
Better, Faster, Strong

and from The Guardian:
This column will change your life: Is Tim Ferris for real?

[t123]

Judge for yourselves.