The place where you will be told to learn your next language could be the second surprise. Usually, adults think of language learning in terms of people interacting with each other, either in a beautiful city or a romantic countryside, in a variety of situations ranging from gentle and friendly circles to outright tantra-inspired gatherings. Again, you will find nothing of all this in The Word Brain. When we later summarise how to rapidly achieve reading and comprehension skills, I will prescribe you months of lonely learning sessions with books and audio files. If you don't like the idea that fast language learning is essentially a lonely combat, you can still choose to stop reading here.

The third surprise is the route you need to take. While I set the goals and define the time frame, it is up to you to find the most promising roads to achieve your goals and to develop the survival skills needed for a learning effort that is going to last months and sometimes years. Some people are attracted by this kind of adventure and draw motivation from it. After all, you will partly invent yourself as your own teacher. If you feel scared by this prospective, consider at least reading the first chapter, Words. Thereafter, you may decide that you have no time to learn a new language, but never again will you say that you have no talent for it. This revelation might well be worth half an hour of reading.

So you still want to continue? Then let me briefly explain how The Word Brain came to life. It all started when, on one of those birthdays which are turning points in life, I offered myself an exclusive present most of my busy colleagues can rarely afford: Time. I would dedicate two consecutive years to learning my 7^th language. Just to complicate matters, I accepted a triple challenge:

1. Learn a language at an advanced age - at 50, the memory is not what it used to be at 20!
2. Learn the language without teachers, using only books, CDs and TV.
3. Learn a difficult language: Arabic.

It all started at school where the languages I was taught - French, English, Latin - had long-lasting consequences on my life. At 17, I met a brilliant and attractive French teenager who is now my wife. Today, I write this book in English in order to reach a global public; but even Latin was of paramount importance. One week before my 13^th birthday, this old and dead language was the subject of my first self-experiments when I used the new Christmas voice-recorder to register the Latin words and their German translations: rosa - die Rose; insula - die Insel; bestia - das Tier. For several weeks thereafter, I would lie in bed at night, listening to the recordings in the dark. I didn't know at the time that I was casting the basis for my future medical career. We will come back to that.

In total, I have spent approximately 10 years of my life learning, playing and experimenting with language. This guide summarises some of the lessons I have learned. It is a guide for adults. To make sure that you don't waste your time, let me describe the kind of adventure you are embarking on. The Word Brain is not about counting ("I, too, know Arabic. I can count to 10."), ordering a dish of Italian pastasciutta or any other minor conversational exploit. This guide is about the effort adults need to undertake to speak and understand another language. I define "speaking another language" extensively. The definition includes the ability

• to read essays or newspapers
• to understand TV news or documentary programmes
• to imagine the correct spelling of words while listening to TV news or documentaries
• to repeat, with a delay of a second or two, what you hear on TV

In other words, The Word Brain describes the steps to metamorphose yourself from a perfect illiterate to a person who has fluent hearing and reading abilities in another language. To develop these abilities, you will ideally study on a daily basis. Depending on a number of variables that I will discuss, the time estimated to accomplish your task is between one and five years.

I have condensed The Word Brain as much as possible so that you can read it in a couple of hours. If you have learned other languages before, you will recognise some of your experiences and find explanations for your successes, failures or frustrations. If you have to learn another language in the future, you might find some useful hints about how to streamline your project and save time. Young teachers will read the following chapters with particular attention. Although it is not a treaty on neuroscience, The Word Brain introduces basic concepts of information processing and storage in our word brain. Suggestions on how to use modern communication technologies to facilitate language teaching indicate avenues for future activities.

The first chapter will show you how language learning can partly be quantified, thus enabling you to plan your future effort over time. In the subsequent chapters, you will hear such curious advice as "Start listening, go on listening, continue listening - but please don't speak too early!"; you will discover some of your extraordinary reading abilities; learn how differently your brain processes spoken words and written words; see the need of sequencing speech in small slices; discover the extraordinary accomplishments of your memory; and, finally, conceive a strategic plan to crack your next language as quickly and as reliably as possible.

Reading newspapers, understanding TV - the bar is high. Let's start with the number of new words you have to feed into your brain. Be prepared for the worst.