You are now ready for take off. Depending on the language you are going to learn, 5,000 to 15,000 words are waiting to be nailed into your brain. The sheer volume of this task - 500 to 1,500 hours - may surprise those who had a na�ve or romantic perception of speaking other people's tongues. Realistic minds find it encouraging that the time frame of language learning is predictable.

If you are learning 'just for fun' and want to limit daily learning to one hour a day, avoid languages with heavy 'word loads'. For people from Western Europe these are, for example, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese, or other African and Asian languages. Instead, choose languages with a more familiar vocabulary. Please don't consider anything less than daily work; alternatively, you could try 'pulse treatments' of three hours twice a week.

If you learn languages at university and, a fortiori, if you contemplate becoming a language teacher, things are different. Every language is within your reach because your daily work schedule includes 3 hours of word nailing plus hours of listening to audio sources. Don't even envisage a more modest approach. Nobody wants language teachers who are not in command of what they teach, and anything less than 5 hours of daily study is unacceptable. Those not willing to fulfil these requirements should reconsider their professional choices.

>> More

"After reading The Word Brain, 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."