Learning a language in 24 hours is impossible, right? Not according to British memory champion Ed Cooke, who co-founded a company called Memrise along with a Princeton neuroscientist. They combine what cognitive science knows about what makes information memorable with common social gaming strategies about what makes an activity fun and addictive. They claim their web app can help anyone memorize anything in no time at all.
Author and journalist Joshua Foer, who says he’s “never been good at languages,” recently put Memrise to the test. In preparation for a trip to the Congo, he attempted to learn Lingala, an African language spoken in that region. More >>
See: Smithsonian.com
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Local time: 22:32
English to Chinese
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Learn 8760 languages in 365 days.
Local time: 17:32
Member (2006)
English to Russian
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I learned a language in 30 minutes. It’s Esperanto.
Ghana
Local time: 14:32
Japanese to English
The title is slightly misleading. The author learned about 1000 words in 22.5 hours, but those hours were spread over a 10-week period. That's hardly the impression one gets from the headline, and I can't help thinking he could have learned way more than that with 10 weeks of focused study.
Netherlands
Local time: 16:32
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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And then what happened... did they eat him?
Ghana
Local time: 14:32
Japanese to English
And then what happened...
Absolutely nothing. You can read the full, rather dull article with an equally misleading headline here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/nov/09/learn-language-in-three-months
United States
Local time: 10:32
Italian to English
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And then what happened... did they eat him?
Funny
China
Local time: 22:32
Chinese to English
It also mentions using the mnemonic technique, which I have never been able to master. It always feels like thinking up those little stories is harde... See more
It also mentions using the mnemonic technique, which I have never been able to master. It always feels like thinking up those little stories is harder work than just learning the fact/Chinese character. But apparently it really works for some. ▲ Collapse
Local time: 16:32
Swedish to English
What for you speak?
Italy
Local time: 16:32
Italian to English
For anyone interested in applying the techniques outlined in the article to everyday life, Tony Buzan's "The Memory Book" provides some excellent and innovative techniques along with fascinating insights into how memory techniques have been used throughout history, most notably by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. My favourite is probably the Roman Room System
[Edited at 2013-02-16 18:34 GMT]
Local time: 16:32
Italian to English
There's various software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition#Software
I'm giving Mnemosyne a try (before I read this article I might add). Memorylifter helped me a lot with memorising Italian vocabulary, back in the day.
I too struggle with visual/story approaches to memorising. I think it's a personal matter, and that my brain doesn't work that way. But the mnem... See more
There's various software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition#Software
I'm giving Mnemosyne a try (before I read this article I might add). Memorylifter helped me a lot with memorising Italian vocabulary, back in the day.
I too struggle with visual/story approaches to memorising. I think it's a personal matter, and that my brain doesn't work that way. But the mnemonic major system for memorising numbers works with phonetics, and that seems to agree with me. ▲ Collapse
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