4. The Quick Start Guide

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Fluent-Forever.com Gabriel Wyner

A Quick-Start Guide to Learning Any Language

Introduction

Here’s the deal. I’m not allowed to send out advance copies of my book, Fluent Forever, to

my backers. That would make my publisher sad. However, if I give you all enough information to

start succeeding at your language learning goals before the book even comes out, then you’re all

going to be psyched about these ideas and pass them on to your friends, and this will make my

publisher (and me) very happy. So my goal is to give you everything you need to succeed. This 11-

page format is about 3% of the size of the book, so I’ll have to skip a lot of fun stories and the

science of why it works, but I can get you started with a pretty damn good toolbox.

Overview

I break language learning into four parts: Sound Games, Word Games, Sentence Games, and

The Language Game. The idea is that you build a language up from its smallest pieces: you learn

the sounds and the alphabet, you learn some simple words, you use those words to learn grammar,

and you use grammar to learn to communicate in that language.

Anki

In my book, I have an appendix for folks who wish to learn a language, but don’t feel

comfortable doing it with computer-based tools. Unfortunately, I don’t have room to talk about that

here. I’m going to assume that you’re comfortable using your computer, and therefore, I’m going to

explain how to use my favorite memorization software, Anki. Anki is a computerized flashcard-

making tool that jams information into your head at a ridiculous rate. It’s extraordinary software,

and once you get used to it (which may take some work; Anki’s interface can be tricky), you’ll find

that nothing else works nearly as well. To get you through Anki’s learning curve quickly, download

Anki (at ankisrs.net) and then watch the video series here: fluent-forever.com/chapter2.

Phase 1: Sound Games

I can mostly skip this section. If you’re reading this, you saw my Kickstarter, and so you

already know what I recommend in terms of building up your ears and learning basic spelling.

Other ways of mastering a language’s sounds and spellings aren’t nearly as fast, so we’ll stick with

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the apps I’m developing. Still, the apps are taking longer than originally anticipated, and some of

you are studying less popular languages that I won’t be covering. If you don’t yet have access to a

pronunciation trainer but are itching to start, this is what I’d suggest:

Get a nice quality textbook. I have some recommendations at fluent-forever.com/language-

resources, or you can browse Amazon to find a well-rated book. In a textbook, you’ll find a

pronunciation guide with example words for every spelling rule in your language (gn is for

gnocchi). Use those example words to make flashcards in Anki. You’ll find instructions and demo

decks to help you do this easily here: Fluent-Forever.com/gallery. That’ll give you enough of a

foundation to get started, and later, you can use a Pronunciation Trainer to further refine your ear.

Phase 2: Word Games

You’re going to use Anki to learn 625 basic words. These are words that are common in

every language and can be learned using pictures, rather than translations: words like dog, ball, to

eat, red, to jump. Your goal is two-fold: first, when you learn these words, you’re reinforcing the

ear training foundation you’re building using my apps, and second, you’re learning to think in your

target language. Every time you look at an object and immediately think of the corresponding word

in your target language, you’re practicing the ability to skip translating in your head. This ability

will serve you well once you’re ready to learn sentences.

We’ll learn these words using three games, which you’ll play every time you create new

flashcards in Anki:

– Game 1: Spot the Differences in Google Images

Suppose you were learning the word devushka (girl) in Russian, and you decided to take my

advice and learn it using a picture, instead of an English translation. So you go to Google Images

(or better, Google Images Basic Mode, which gives you captions for each word and more

manageably sized images: Tinyurl.com/basicimage), and you search for “girl.” You’ll see

something like this:

Google Images search for “girl” (Using Basic Mode: Tinyurl.com/basicimage)

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It’s exactly what you’d expect. They look like girls, and you could pick out a couple of these

images, slap them on a flashcard, and teach yourself devushka within a few seconds. Unfortunately,

you’d be missing out on the most interesting – and most memorable – bits of the story.” You

already know what a girl is. What happens if you search for “девушка” (devushka) instead?

Google Images search for “девушка” (Using Translated Basic Mode: Fluent-Forever.com/chapter4)

Russian devushki tend to be 18-22 year old sex objects. Devushka is not a word you’d use to

describe your Russian friend’s 3-year-old daughter.1 And while knowing the difference between girl

and devushka may keep you out of trouble with your Russian friend, it’s also a thousand times more

interesting than simply memorizing “devushka = girl.” When you spot the differences between a

new word and its translation, you’ll find that the new word suddenly becomes memorable.

Devushka is not some random exception; it’s the rule. Nearly every new word you encounter

will be subtly (and sometimes, not-so-subtly) different from its English counterpart. French

grandmères are different from English grandmothers, and German Hünde are different from English

dogs.2 So your first step when learning a new word is to search for it on Google Images, look

through 20-40 images, and try to spot the differences between what you see and what you expect to

see. This experience is the learning process for your word. It’s the (often exciting) moment when

you discover what your word actually means. Once you’ve had that experience, you’ll grab 1-2

images and put them on a flashcard to remind you of what you saw.3 You’ll find a guide to building

those flashcards here: Fluent-Forever.com/gallery.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1!You’d!use!devochka)–)the!diminutive!form!of!devushka!–!for!your!friend’s!little!girl.!

2!Hünde!are!stockier,!and!they!occasionally!wear!hats!(tinyurl.com/pswvmw8).!!

3!This!is!why!I!can’t!make!your!Anki!decks!for!you.!You’d!be!missing!the!learning!experience,!and!the!flashcards!

wouldn’t!work,!because!they’re!not!reminding!you!of!anything!you!previously!experienced.!

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– Game 2: The Memory Game – Making your words more memorable through personal

connections

There’s a difference between learning that devushka is the Russian word for “young female

sex object” and learning that devushka is the exact word that our new office intern, Susie, would use

to describe herself if she spoke Russian. The former is memorable; it’s linked to concrete images

and a fun learning experience. But the latter is much more memorable (50-100% more, according to

the research), because it’s linked to your own life experiences.

When making your first vocabulary flashcards, try to find a personal connection for each of

your words – a memory of an event or a person that somehow connects to the word you’re learning.

If you can find one, choose a short reminder (a name, a date, a location), and stick that on your

flashcards as well. Generally, I try to keep those reminders as short and devoid of English as

possible, so instead of “Susie would probably call herself a devushka,” I’ll just write “Susie,” and

instead of “I am TERRIFIED of araingnées (spiders)”, I’ll just write “!.” These little notes will be

enough to help me recall my personal connections when I review my flashcards.

– Game 3: The Mnemonic Imagery Game

I’m going to cover this in depth in the webinar, but I’ll give you the mini-version here.4

First, some background: Languages are full of obnoxious irregularities that you “just have to

remember.” In German, for instance, every noun is either masculine, feminine or neuter, and those

genders have little or nothing to do with the actual gender of the noun. Memorizing gender in

German (or French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic) can be a royal pain in the ass,

and a similar memory challenge shows up in the form of “counter words” in Chinese, Japanese and

Korean. How do you memorize this sort of abstract nonsense efficiently?

Use imagery. Instead of trying to remember that German books, maidens and chickens are

all neuter, you can assign a particularly vivid verb to each gender or counter word – all neuter nouns

explode, for instance – and then use that image to help you memorize the gender of each noun.

Once you’re done cleaning up the bloody pieces of maidens and chicken guts off of the walls of

your mind, you’ll find that those images stick a lot better than abstract concepts like grammatical

gender. As you make your flashcards, take a moment to imagine your books exploding, or your

dogs melting, and you’ll find that grammatical gender will become relatively easy to remember.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4!If!you!don’t!have!access!to!the!webinar,!I’ll!be!live!streaming!a!full!workshop!at!CreativeLive.com!on!May!22K24!

(http://tinyurl.com/GabeKCL).!

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– What to do

Get a list of 625 starter words. If you purchased a word list from me, use that. If not, grab an

alphabetical English list from my website (Fluent-Forever.com/appendix5), pull out a small

dictionary (the Lonely Planet phrasebooks are the perfect size) and translate the words in

alphabetical order. Then play all three games while creating your flashcards in Anki (Fluent-

Forever.com/gallery). If you’re an intermediate learner, don’t re-learn words you know already,

even if you only have their translations memorized. Just skim through the 625-word list and learn

whichever words are new to you.

Phase 3: Sentence Games

Once you’ve learned your first 625 words, you will have a solid foundation in the sounds of

your target language, and you’ll know a bunch of extremely important, extremely common words.

Now it’s time to start on grammar.

Grammar gets a bad rap in language learning because it often seems complex and tedious.

Terms like “present perfect indicative” and “pluperfect subjunctive” tend to produce a great deal of

eye glaze. Yet we need this complexity. We have complex thoughts , and we need a way of

conveying those thoughts to others. Grammar helps turn “ME EAT HAMBURGER NOW!” into

“Would anyone like to go to Five Guys for a burger?”

So I’m not going to claim that grammar is simple; it’s not. But when you look at the

structure of grammar – how it conveys all that complex information – you’ll find that that structure

is ultimately extremely simple. In every sentence in every language, grammar conveys information

through some combination of three basic ingredients: New Words, New Word Forms, and Word

Order.

I’ll show you what I mean with an example from English: “My homework was eaten by my

dog.” There’s a lot going on in this sentence. We have three characters and one action: a homework

assignment, a dog, me (it’s my dog and my homework assignment, after all), and eating. And

grammar is doing all sorts of complex things: not only is it telling us what happened, but it’s even

telling us what’s important within the story. This isn’t “My dog ate my homework” – a story about a

bad dog – it’s “My homework was eaten by my dog” – a story about a very sad homework

assignment.

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All of this complexity is stored in three basic ways: through the order of the words (it’s not

‘My dog was eaten by my homework’), the use of added function words (‘by’ and ‘was’), and the

use of new word forms (‘eaten’ instead of ‘to eat’, ‘my’ instead of ‘I’). And you can learn all of

these little pieces of grammar using three flashcard designs:

New Words

Word Forms

Word Order

To learn any grammatical form in your target language, all you need to do is find a good

example sentence, understand the story behind that sentence (this is where the translations in your

grammar book come in handy), and then ask yourself three questions:5

– Are there any new words here?

– Are there any new word forms here?

– Is the word order surprising to you?

Then make flashcards for any information you’d like to learn.

To do this, you’ll need a bunch of quality example sentences. You have several good

options:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5!I!warned!about!the!dangers!of!translations!in!the!book!excerpt!I!sent!out,!but!here!I’m!recommending!them.!

What!gives?!Translations!don’t!capture!every!nuance!of!a!word!or!a!sentence,!but!they!do!a!good!job!of!giving!

you!the!gist!of!a!story.!I!don’t!have!a!problem!with!using!them!for!that!purpose,!provided!you!follow!one!rule:!If)

it’s)on)your)flashcards,)it’s)exclusively)in)your)target)language.!If!you!follow!that!rule,!you’re!going!to!be!

memorizing)your!target!language!in!a!way!that!will!build!fluency!and!stay!memorable.!

Fluent-Forever.com Gabriel Wyner

1. A grammar book: Someone has spent a great deal of time picking out good examples for

you, so you might as well take advantage of them. Go through a grammar book, grab any

sentences you find interesting, and break them down into flashcards.

2. Google Images: Remember how you used Google Images to learn about Russian

devushki? You can use Google Images to provide you with example sentences with

pictures and translations for basically any word in your target language. You’ll find

details for setting that up here: Fluent-Forever.com/chapter4

3. Lang-8.com: When you write your own sentences – whether example sentences for

vocabulary words or lengthier journal entries about your life – you’ll find that those

sentences become extraordinarily memorable. But you will make mistakes when writing

in a foreign language, and so you’re going to need corrections. Lang-8.com lets you get

those corrections for free, in exchange for correcting someone else’s writing in your

native language. Turn those corrections into flashcards.

4. A monolingual dictionary in your target language: These are dictionaries that give you

definitions in your target language, rather than English translations. You won’t be able to

use them in the beginning, but after you reach an intermediate level, these dictionaries

become an essential source of example sentences and input. One of the limitations of the

methods we’re discussing is that you need quality example sentences to learn abstract

words. You can’t easily learn a concept like “honesty” from a sentence like “He is a/an __

man.” There’s just not enough context to tell you much about the missing word. But if

you add a definition – “He is a/an __ man. – Adjective: You don’t lie, cheat or steal” –

you can give yourself all the context you need to learn the word.

– What to do: Go through the first few chapters of your grammar book, and start making flashcards

for any sentences you find interesting. If your grammar book has a hundred boring drills for the

plural form of nouns, pick your two favorite ones, and skip the rest. Conversely, if your book has

only one good example sentence for a grammatical construction – She is a nurse – and then throws

a declension chart at you – I am, you are, he is, she is, it is, we are, they are – then use Google

Images and Lang-8.com to provide you with more interesting example sentences. Use pictures from

Google Images on every flashcard you make, even if those pictures are only vaguely related to the

words you’re learning. They’ll make your words and grammatical constructions much more

memorable.

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Phase 4: The Language Game

After you’ve spent some time in Phase 3, you’ll find that you have the ability to easily memorize

any word or grammatical concept you’d like to learn. Now you need some direction in terms of

what to learn, when to learn it, and how to turn all the data you’re cramming into your head into a

useable language. Welcome to The Language Game.

– Finishing up your foundation

Learn the first half of your grammar book. The second half may contain specialized topics

– reported speech, special word forms you’ll encounter in literature, etc. – which you may or may

not need now, but the first half is a slam dunk. Start there, and if you need more examples of any

particular words or grammatical concepts, get them through Google Images and Lang-8.

Next, get a Frequency Dictionary (resources here:!fluent-forever.com/language-resources/).

These dictionaries contain a list of the most common words in your target language, and they help

you use your study time more efficiently. Learn the top 1000 words in your target language, with

the help of Google Images and Lang-8. By the time you’re halfway through, you should be able to

start using a monolingual dictionary to supplement your studies. Do that, too. And if you see a

word, but can’t seem to find a good example sentence, just skip it. At this stage, you’re just trying to

expose yourself to a lot of vocabulary and sentences; it’s not essential that you know every single

word. As your vocabulary grows, you’ll find that tricky words will get easier and easier to learn, so

later, you’ll be able to go back and learn any words you’ve skipped.

Once you’ve finished with those top 1,000 words, go back to your grammar book and skim

through the second half. Make flashcards for any grammatical constructions you find interesting.

Once you’re done, you’re going to be in a pretty good place: you’ll have a nice foundation in

vocabulary and grammar, you’ll be able to express yourself in writing (through your practice on

Lang-8), and you’ll be able to read most texts without a major struggle.

– Customizing your language to fit your needs

Now you can start customizing your language learning to fit your individual needs. In some

ways, this phase is simple, even obvious: if you want to have a bigger vocabulary, then learn more

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vocabulary. If you want to be more comfortable reading, read books, and if you want to speak, then

find native speakers and talk with them. There are more and less efficient ways of going about this,

so I will walk through each facet of your budding language and show you how to improve it

effectively.

Vocabulary: If you want to boost your vocabulary, you have a couple of good options. You

can learn the next 1,000 words on your frequency list, and that would be a good use of your time.

Still, at some point, you’re going to want to fit your vocabulary to your individual needs. Get a

‘Thematic vocabulary book,” a book that lists vocabulary by theme (food, travel, music, business,

automotive, etc.). Go through it, check off the words that seem relevant to your interests and where

you expect to use your language. Then learn those words using Google Images, Lang-8, your

monolingual dictionary and Anki.

Reading: To improve your reading comprehension, you’ll want to read a book. For your

first book, choose a popular (e.g. readily available) title in a genre that you enjoy. I’m a big fan of

the Harry Potter translations. If possible, read the text of that book while you listen to its

audiobook.6 The audiobook will force you through the text at a rapid clip, and prevent you from

stopping all the time to look up definitions. You’ll find that the first few chapters will be

challenging, but as you continue, you’ll begin to forget that you’re reading a book in a foreign

language. By the end of the book, you should be substantially more comfortable with reading in

your target language, and as a bonus, you’ll have just exposed your ears to 15-20 hours of audio

input.

Listening: As a natural next step after improving your reading comprehension, start to

refine your listening comprehension. Find a TV series to watch in your target language without

subtitles. Most popular American TV series have been competently dubbed into a wide variety of

languages, and they’re extremely entertaining. As with your first book, it will be challenging for the

first few episodes, but as you get deeper into the series, you’ll feel more and more comfortable. To

help speed up this process (and to make those first episodes easier), read episode summaries ahead

of time in your target language. They’ll help you understand what’s going on, so you won’t panic if

a few incomprehensible words slip by. You can often find episode summaries in your target

language’s Wikipedia page for each TV series. For instance, you can search for Lost, Season 1 (in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

6!That’s!why!you!want!a!popular!book!–!it!increases!your!chances!of!finding!it!as!an!audiobook.!You’ll!be!able!to!

find!some!on!Amazon.com,!but!in!general,!you’ll!need!to!search!for!audiobooks!through!foreign!stores!online.!By!

this!phase,!you!should!have!sufficient!language!skills!to!search!for!“audiobook”!in!your!target!language,!find!a!few!

online!options!and!navigate!!their!payment!screens.!

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10!

English), then click on the ‘Français’ button on the bottom left to find French episode summaries:

(Lost: Les Disparus, Saison 1). The translation links on Wikipedia turn out to be a nice way of

figuring out what the title of a given TV series turns into when translated. The French title of “The

West Wing,” for example, is “À la Maison-Blanche” (“At the White House”). You can use these

titles to help you search for a TV show for online streaming or purchase.

Speech: If you’ve ever played the game Taboo, you’ve practiced the central skill in

speaking a language fluently. For those of you who haven’t played it, Taboo is a party game. You

pick up a card, and read something like “Painkiller – head, ache, hurt, medicine, drug.” You then

attempt to make your team members say the word “Painkiller” without using any of the words on

the card. “It’s a … pill! You take it when you…don’t feel good…in your brain. When your brain

hurts, you take this.” Then, hopefully, one of your team members shouts “Painkiller,” and you win

the point.

Taboo is fluency training in the form of a party game. When you learn a foreign language,

you won’t know all the words you need. You’ll want to ask your German friend for a painkiller, but

you might not know the words for headache, pain, or medicine. You then have two options. You

can switch into English, and he’ll probably understand. You’ll get your painkiller, but you won’t get

any better at German. Your second option is more challenging: you stay in German and play Taboo.

You use the words you know to talk about words you don’t, and as a result, you take a step forward

towards fluency. So if you’re trying to learn to speak fluently, and you want to do it as efficiently as

possible, you need to put yourself in situations that are challenging, situations in which you don’t

know the words you need. Then you play Taboo as often as you can. There’s one rule you need to

remember: Only speak your target language. If you adhere to that rule whenever you practice

speaking, you’ll be playing Taboo all the time, and you’ll reach fluency at a steady, brisk pace.

To play Taboo, you’re going to need practice partners. Locally, you can find friends,

colleagues, private tutors (Craigslist.org) and large language practice groups (Meetup.com). You

can also find practice partners on the Internet. iTalki.com is a website designed to put you in touch

with a conversation partner or tutor for free (if you’re willing to chat in English for half of the time),

or for $4-12/hr (if you don’t want to bother with English). It’s a tremendous and affordable

resource.

If you have some time and money on your hands, travel is a nice way to immerse yourself in

the culture (i.e., the food!) of your target language and practice speaking at the same time. Be aware

that most people are eager to practice English, so you’re going to need to be insistent about sticking

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11!

to your target language if you want to improve your fluency. If some locals insist on speaking

English, tell them that you’re Albanian. No one speaks Albanian.

Last, consider a summer immersion program like those at Middlebury College

(middlebury.edu/ls). There, English is expressly forbidden, and as a result, you get to play Taboo all

the time. You learn very fast. Financial aid opportunities show up in late October and tend to dry up

by December, so apply early if you need help affording it.

The Language Game: Learning a foreign language is a fluid process; you’re building a lot

of different skills that meld into each other. The more vocabulary you learn, the easier it will be to

speak about a wide variety of topics. The more you practice speaking, the easier it will be to watch

foreign TV and movies. So rather than be strict and methodical about this (“My reading

comprehension skills are lacking; I must read 15 books to maximize efficiency!”), just do what you

find most enjoyable. If you like writing about your day on Lang-8.com and making flashcards out

of the corrections, then keep doing that. If you like to chat with your tutor on iTalki, do that.

There’s a very simple way to figure out if you’re spending your time well: if you’re enjoying

yourself in your target language, then you’re doing it right. In the end, language learning should be

fun. It needs to be fun; you retain information better when you’re enjoying yourself, and the journey

to fluency takes too much time to force yourself through using willpower alone. So enjoy yourself,

and play around with new ways to think about the world. I’ll see you on the other side.

4. The Quick Start Guide

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