{"id":1149,"date":"2011-06-08T20:32:35","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T20:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2025-04-07T13:19:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T13:19:37","slug":"a-language-in-2-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/08\/a-language-in-2-days\/","title":{"rendered":"A language in 2 days"},"content":{"rendered":"

Often I see websites proclaiming that you can \u201clearn a language in a year\u201d or \u201clearn a language in three months\u201d. But this has got to be a first \u2013 a language teacher in London is claiming to be able to teach a language in just two days.<\/p>\n

Mandarin is reputed to be one of the toughest languages to learn, mainly because it is tonal. It\u2019s a challenge for non-speakers who live in China to learn the language, as a friend of mine has discovered. So what can a beginner pick up in two days?<\/p>\n

As a writer from The Guardian<\/em> discovered, quite a lot:<\/p>\n

\n

Day one begins in the present tense, progresses to questions and then on to the past and future. By day two I am playing fast and loose with pronouns, possessives and conditionals, albeit with a very limited vocabulary.
\n (Source: The Guardian<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The process is apparently meant to \u201cemphasise relaxation and experimentation, [but] there are rules. Writing anything down is banned, as is all technical jargon\u201d. This is in line with the language trainer\u2019s belief that languages are a practical subject that you need to be trained in.<\/p>\n

The writer tested his language skills at a Mandarin restaurant. The verdict?<\/p>\n

\n

There are obvious deficiencies in what I have learned. Chief among them the fact that I know so few nouns; not even, for example, numbers, or months, or farmyard animals, which school language classes had conditioned me to think of as essential. (Provigil<\/a>) I can, however, convert a verb into the past and future tenses, and say that I, you, we, they, he or she did it, and add an if, a but or a because, and offer, when the situation demands, to buy a stranger’s mother or sell them a photographer. Which is more than I ever managed in five years of French at school. Have I really learned Mandarin in just two days? Well, yes and no. Mostly no, but sort of. Hao.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Often I see websites proclaiming that you can \u201clearn a language in a year\u201d or \u201clearn a language in three months\u201d. But this has got to be a first \u2013 a language teacher in London is claiming to be able to teach a language in just two days. Mandarin is reputed to be one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,90],"tags":[40,123,90,553],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-acquisition","category-mandarin","tag-language-acquisition","tag-language-learning","tag-mandarin","tag-new-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1152,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions\/1152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}