I let them sit in my inbox unread.

Why did I such a thing? I did it because I procrastinate; because I was busy; because I didn’t have time right now and I’d come back to it later. And these emails continued to come in daily, reminding me that I need to get to them. This was not good for me, mentally. These emails were becoming an itch in my brain that I could feel constantly but couldn’t scratch. I didn’t want to unsubscribe from the emails either. That would be admitting failure, admitting that I’m not truly serious about learning this language.

Yesterday, I intended to do something about these emails, but realized that I didn’t look forward to going through the dozen or so emails that have built up and copy-pasting sentences into Anki. That would take time that I wanted to spend elsewhere. I then remembered reading about Critical Frequency from the great Khatzumoto, which is the concept of only doing a couple minutes worth of a task at a time, but doing it many times a day. Before going to bed last night, I setup some events in my Google Calendar, at 5 minutes before each hour from 8am to 5pm, which last 5 minutes a piece and repeat daily. These sync up with my Android phone to create a device which beeps at me at 5 minutes before each hour to remind me to do a language task of some sort, whether that’s doing my reps in Anki, or copying sentences from an email into Anki.

This system worked perfectly. I did my daily Anki reps during these times, then copied the sentences from the emails. I only cleared half of those emails, but my mind is at ease. Using this system, I know that I will clear those emails in the next day or two, and will be able to keep up with them, stress-free. And that is the wonder of Critical Frequency.

Related posts:

1. Jes, Mi Lernas Esperanton – Yes, I’m Learning Esperanto
2. Learn Swedish With Online Swedish Radio
3. Ramses launches the Spanish-English Sentence Database

Learning a language is like having a pet.  You need to feed and water it everyday.  You can’t miss days.  Many people who try to learn a language do really well at first.  They are really motivated.  They daydream about being a master of their target language and it gives them all this purpose and energy.  Oh I’m going to learn Spanish!  Here I go!  But after a while that motivation begins to fade, they get bored and then they stop.  People are like this.  We get bored and we want to do something else instead.

Imagine you go to a pet store and see a puppy.  It’s little, it’s cute.  It sticks it’s tongue out and wags its little tail at you.  It nips at the ears of its puppy friends.  It runs around clumsily, stomping on the puppies sleeping in the basket over there.  Oh, this puppy is for me!  So you take it home.  You are very excited about your new puppy.  Everyday you feed him, give him water, clean up after him, take him on walks, play with him.  He’s your best friend!

But after a couple weeks you get tired.  This dog poops too much!  He brings fleas into the house.  He barks at night and wakes me up.  He jumps too much!  He licks my pizza before I can put it in my mouth.  How annoying!  So you take a break.  You take a 3-day vacation away from the house.  I just need a little time to recharge, you say.

What happens when you get home?  What a mess!  Your dog has torn your house up!  You weren’t there to feed him so he ate the stuffing in your couch!  You weren’t there to play with him, so he played with all of your stuff instead.  Everything is on the floor, covered in dog slobber and teethmarks.  You weren’t there to take your dog outside so he peed all over your carpet.  It stinks!

This is what happens when you take breaks away from your language.  When you come back, you’ll have a big mess to clean up.  You’ll forget all the words you just learned.  You’ll have lost the plot in the drama you were watching.  You’ll forget what happened in the comic book you were reading.  You’ll have 1000 cards due in Anki!  Oh no!

Now you have to spend time relearning everything.  You can’t just pick up where you left off.  You have to go back to before you left and do everything over again!  Cleaning up big messes is no fun.  If it’s not fun, you might even decide to put it off even longer!

There’s dog hair all over my toothbrush.  Stupid dog!  Don’t blame the dog.  You were the one who left!  And why didn’t you pack your toothbrush with you anyway?

If you take frequent breaks from your language it’s even worse.  Then you don’t even have a chance to catch up.  You’re gone from the house so much that your pet won’t even recognize you.  If you have a pet monkey and you only come home to feed him once a week, is he going to be happy to see you?  No!  He’s going to throw poop at you!  Get out of my house, human!  Frequent, extended periods away from your target language will cause your language foundation to crumble.  The bits and pieces will slip through the cracks and fall into the gutter where they will dissolve in the rushing water.  Good luck finding them then!  I can’t think of a slower way to fluency.

And if you are gone for too long, you’ll come home and your pet will be dead!  Ever take off a year or two from a language?  Bad idea!  Just start over!

Some of you may be thinking: oh this analogy doesn’t hold up.  When people go on vacation, they get a friend or a neighbor to watch their pets for them.

It’s still the same.  If you give your friend your Spanish books.  Here, you read these.  Give him all your Spanish DVDs.  Watch these for me, will you?   Who’s going to get better at Spanish?  Not you!  You might as well give him your plane tickets to Spain too.  You won’t know what the hell is going on over there.  If you give your pet monkey to your friend, they’ll bond while you’re away.  They’ll climb trees and eat bananas together, scratch their armpits.  But then if you show up expecting to join in, the monkey will just scratch its head and steal your sandwich.

I’ve been talking about dogs and monkeys, but really a language is a much more high-maintenance pet.  It’s more like having a pet hippo.  With a dog, it only takes a minute to pour dog food and water into his bowl.  If you take him on a 15 minute walk once a day, play with him a little, pet him while you watch TV and take him outside every now and then to do his business, you can get by.  An hour a day.

A hippo is a different story.  A hippo requires much more food than a dog.  You’ll need a shovel to scoop it all into her mouth.  That might take an hour in itself.  And you’ll actually need two shovels, because a paper towel won’t cut it when it comes time to clean up hippo poop.  And after you’re done hauling those big black trash bags to your front lawn, get out your brush because it’s bath time and a hippo can’t reach her backside with those stubby little legs of hers.  You can train a dog to follow your commands, but a hippo does what it wants.  When you take your hippo on a walk you’d better bring a big stick to go along with your shovel or you’ll have angry neighbors breathing down your neck wondering where their tree went or why their car is upside-down in the pool.  “Sit” and “Here girl” won’t work with a hippo.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that a pet hippo is an all day commitment.  You can’t take your eyes off her for a moment or you’ll find yourself with a ticket for obstructing traffic and a weekend lost while you rebuild the fence.

Learning a language, really learning a language, is like having a pet hippo.  You need to give it all of your attention.  As much as possible, every waking moment you have should be spent in your target language.  And you can’t skip days.  All day everyday.  A few hours a week with a pet turtle isn’t going to cut it.  Trust me, I turtled Japanese for a long time and it got me nowhere very slow.  It wasn’t until I hippoed up that things started happening.  Everyday.  All day.  Think of a hippo in a river.  Immersion.  Stop writing blog posts about monkey shit and go watch a Japanese movie.

It’s possible to learn two languages at the same time.  Just because you have a hippo doesn’t mean you can’t have a turtle too.  But one of them has to be a hippo language.  Two turtles aren’t going to win you any races.  And you need to feed both of them everyday.  Don’t go back and forth, loving your hippo for a week, and then loving your turtle for a week.  Spend time with them both, whenever you get the chance.  Here’s some terminology:

1. Hippo language: 4+ hours a day (Hungry Hippo 4-8, Happy Hippo 8+)
2. Monkey language: 2-4 hours a day
3. Dog language: 1-2 hours a day
4. Turtle language: Few hours a week
5. Rock language: Look at it a few times a year.

I hippo Japanese full time and dog Thai on the side.  I feed them both everyday.  By feed I mean watching movies, watching TV, reading books, reading comics, reading news, doing SRS reps, playing video games, translating video games, translating magazine articles, reading children’s books, watching mouths and mimicking voices.  And it’s working.

But don’t get carried away.  3 languages?  4?  5?  at the same time?  Unless you’re turtling them, where are you going to get the money for all that food?  You’ll just end up with a house full of dead animals.

Related posts:

1. What A Forest Monk Can Teach You About Language Learning
2. Language Learning Tip #2: Read Children’s Books
3. Two Months of Non-Stop Pali

She told me that when she was a little girl her family had an old TV. In addition to the normal Japanese stations, it got one foreign station that nobody in her family watched. One day, on a whim she turned the dial to that foreign station. There was an American movie on (she told me which one, but I forgot). There were no subtitles of course, so she couldn’t understand the movie. But she thought it was so interesting that these people were making these strange sounds with their mouths and that they could understand each other. She said that on that very day, she decided that one day she would understand what the actors in that movie were saying.

Later, she studied English in school, majored in English in college, studied abroad in America, married an American, had kids and lived in America for 20+ years. Perfectly fluent in English.

I asked her if she ever went back and watched that first American movie, the one she saw when she was a little girl in Japan. She said “Of course I did!”. What did you think about the movie? “Ahh, it was ok. But I could understand it!”

I thought this was a cool story. After hearing it, I got the idea to make a similar goal for myself with Japanese. I had already seen plenty of Japanese movies (subtitled) so a movie wasn’t going to cut it. Not mysterious enough to keep me wondering year after year. But what about a book?

Later that week I went to a used bookstore, a big purple building in the middle of town. As luck would have it, they had a decent foreign book section, with a nice selection of Japanese stuff: old magazines, newspapers, comics, children’s books, novels. I looked through the novels until I found one with a picture that appealed to me. I opened to the first page and sure enough I couldn’t read a word of it. Perfect. I bought it and promised myself that one day I would understand that book.

I still have it. This is the book I bought 8 years ago:

If you’re wondering why that picture would appeal to me, it’s probably because it reminded me Slayer’s Seasons in the Abyss album:

Anyway, I made the promise to myself that I would someday read that book and understand. That promise has always been in the back of my mind, driving me as I study Japanese (admittedly on and off over the years, but in the past three years, very much on!).

I haven’t read it. I’m not quite there yet. I’m sure I could grind through it with a dictionary, but I want to read it with fluent, literate eyes. So it remains on the shelf. When the time comes for me to read it, I’ll read it and understand and then I’ll know I’ve arrived. It will be a sweet moment.

Even if the book freaking sucks, it doesn’t matter. I’ll have accomplished my dream.

So why am I writing about it now? Because I got a new book.

Last month, Rikker from Thai101 had a book giveaway on his blog. He had two copies of an award-winning Thai novel, one in Thai and the other an English translation. To enter the contest, you had to send in your name and your language preference for the book (Thai or English). Rikker would draw two winners at the beginning of May.

At the time, I had just made a commitment to watch 1000 hours of Thai TV and learn Thai. Since I seemed to be on the path already, I entered the contest and said I wanted the Thai version of the book.

And I won!

I received the book in the mail yesterday (Thanks Rikker! For the dictionary too!). Here it is:

Sure enough, I open the book and I can’t understand a word. I can’t even pronounce any of the words. Hell, I can’t even pronounce any of the characters, except for the one that looks like a penguin. That’s the “g” sound.

So I’ve made myself a promise. One day I will understand this book. I will read all the words and know what they mean. I will read this novel with the same eyes as a literate Thai.

It won’t be soon though! I have a long road ahead of me. In the meantime, I can count the penguins.

If you haven’t done so, I recommend acquiring a book for your target language. Promise yourself to read it after you become fluent and fully literate. Leave it somewhere you can see it from time to time to give you motivation (but don’t peek too early!). Let it be your lost city of gold. Your fountain of youth. Your Holy Grail. That’s a good name. Holy Grail Book. Get yourself a Holy Grail book and stick it on your shelf. Then start the journey to “find” it.

Related posts:

1. How Many Days In Each Month: The Thai Way
2. Foreign Language Polio: TV Method Thai Progress Report 2
3. Children’s Books in Spanish

There are many things I’d like to blame. A stressful personal life. A busy work schedule. Lack of sleep. I’m sure these were all contributing factors, but I think I know the source of the problem: me.

More specifically, it was my decision not to spend at least a few minutes a day on my SRS or any of my learning materials. Even when I was the most busy and the most tired I could have done at least that much. Another problem was that I decided that it was absolutely important that I learn all the verb endings for the preterite and imperfect tenses quickly, so I input all the possible conjugations of hablar, comer, and vivir in those tenses into my SRS. This was a big mistake! My SRS study became pure drudgery. It’s supposed to be fun! If it isn’t, why bother?

I am happy to say that I’m on the path to recovery. I’ve taken Khatzumoto’s advice and have begun to delete all those boring conjugations, choosing instead to rely on adding sentences to my SRS. I now understand why Ramses says I should read about the rules, but not learn them. I’ve burned a CD full of various Spanish podcast episodes so that I can listen to them at time when I listen to audio the most: in my car. As soon as I finish this post, I’m going to grab my DS and play My Spanish Coach.

Once I realized I was avoiding my studies because it had become work, I took steps to correct that, and now I’m excited about learning Spanish once again!

No related posts.

Nothing happens immediately, so in the beginning we can’t see any results from our practice. This is like the example I have often given you of the man who tries to make fire by rubbing two sticks of wood together. He says to himself, “They say there’s fire here.” and he begins rubbing energetically. He’s very impetuous. He rubs on and on but his impatience doesn’t end. He wants to have that fire. He keeps wanting to have that fire, but the fire doesn’t come. So he gets discouraged and stops to rest for awhile. He starts again but the going is slow, so he rests again. By then the heat has disappeared; he didn’t keep at it long enough. He rubs and rubs until he tires and then he stops altogether. Not only is he tired, but he becomes more and more discouraged until he gives up completely. “There’s no fire here!” Actually he was doing the work, but there wasn’t enough heat to start a fire. The fire was there all the time but he didn’t carry on to the end.

Of course Ajahn Chah was talking about meditation practice not language acquisition, but it’s easy to extend the metaphor to language learning. The potential for fluency in your target language is there. You have all the tools you need in order to achieve your goal. All that is left for you to do is to use your tools until you make that fire.

But you have to keep at it. Avoid the vicious cycle where you study enthusiastically for a month only to get bored and take a month off. If you do this, the heat will disappear! Another thing Ajahn Chah used to say regarding meditation practice is this:

Don’t worry whether you feel lazy or diligent. Don’t even say “I’m diligent” or “I’m lazy.” Most people practice only when they feel diligent, if they feel lazy they don’t bother. This is how people usually are. But monks shouldn’t think like that. If you are diligent you practice, when you are lazy you still practice.

Be language learning monks! If you feel motivated, great, start studying. If you feel you have no motivation, study anyway. Keep the momentum going so you don’t lose the heat you’ve worked so hard to create. Switch it up. If you’re bored to death of your Spanish textbook, pop in a Spanish DVD. Shadow an audio book in your target language. Listen to a podcast. Read Harry Potter. They’ve translated Harry Potter into Latin and Ancient Greek. I kid you not. Chances are they have it in your target language too. Keep rubbing those two sticks. Do whatever it takes to maintain consistent practice, and one day you will have your fire: fluency.

Related posts:

1. Language Learning Tip #3: Learn To Cook
2. Learning a language is like having a pet
3. Language Learning Tip #2: Read Children’s Books