Apr 17, 2015
Gabriel Wyner is an
author, opera singer, and polyglot based in Los Angeles, CA. After
not getting anywhere in 5 years of high school language classes, he
reached fluency in German in 14 weeks with the help of the
immersive Middlebury Language Schools. As a result, he fell in love
with the process of language learning. Searching for ways to bring
the immersion experience into the home, he began to develop a
system that rapidly builds fluency in short, daily sessions. In
2010, his efforts paid off. He learned French to fluency in 5
months, and then Russian in 10 months. He recently funded a
Kickstarter to develop a language learning app, about which
Business Insider reported“This Could Be One Of The Best
Language-Learning Apps We've Ever Seen.” His book on language learning
– “Fluent Forever: How to learn a language fast
and never forget it”
In this episode we talk
about the process Gabriel went through before finally arriving at
this method of learning languages. We talk about how he cheated his
way into his current life and method learning languages. He
recommends looking through the google images for the words that you
are learning that way you learn the actual meaning instead of just
a translation. This can have drastic effects sometimes as the
associations can be vastly different. Finally he has very good
advice for learning an accent such as I will need to do while
learning Hindi in India.
His joke "There is a costume
party at a college and there's two germans exchange
students and the host invites the students to dress as
emotions, so one comes in blue as sadness and one comes in red as
anger, and both germans come naked, the first one with his penis in
a pudding jar and says I am fucking disgusted, and the other one
with his penis in a bear says and I am deep in dis
bear"