What Claude Cartaginese has kindly made available

Claude Cartaginese is editor of The Polyglot Project, an eBook, freely available online consisting of 48 accounts from a range of individuals about how they learned (and didn't learn) one, two or more languages. Even several polyglots. 

Each wrote from just a few paragraphs tens of pages (over 100 in one case, the final entry by David James).

For me, the book is a goldmine. It was my starting point for figuring out how languages may best be learned best. It is filled with clues that pertain to language acquisition. I'd recommend the book to anyone thinking about learning another language. It is bound to save you hundreds of hours.

The first thing that struck me was that almost contributor was initially put off by schooling and grammar. It didn't help them. All but about two or three sucked at school - or at least they failed at foreign languages. It was only afterwards, on their own, using methods that they discovered through trial and error, that they began to succeed.

What Allen Carr (and to a lesser extent Edmund Hillary) gave me

Allen Carr is best known for his advice on how to stop smoking. He wrote a book about that subject, and several more in the same vein. One day I happened to read one: No More Worrying. 

The book is punchy. It's informally written. Its chapters are very short - less than a page on average - but numerous. The book gives the impression that it was written off the top of Allen's head.

So, what has this to do with language acquisition?

Well, from Allen I got the idea to write in a similar style. Not to over-think. Keep my phrasing short and light. Just set out and "knock the bugger off" as Sir Edmund Hillary reportedly said about conquering Mt. Everest.

• Stream of consciousness stuff
• Minimal planning 
• Forging rapidly ahead
• Tally ho and all that jazz

It enabled me to write No More English Worries (though I went a few steps further than Allen). 

I counted out the words and wrote exactly 100 words per chapter. Each chapter title is based on Allen's headings (plus a few extra). That helped to set the direction of my nose, which I then followed.

Ask me, and I may send you a copy! 

Nice quote

In a book I'm reading, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (a novel about Dracula, loaned to me by Mario):

Until then my forays into written French had been purely utilitarian, the completion of almost mathematical exercises. When I comprehended a new phrase it was merely a bridge to the next exercise. 

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

And from the same book further on . . .

He pointed to a page of beautiful Arabic, and I thought for the hundredth time how terrible it was that human languages and even alphabets were separated from one another by this frustrating Babel of differences, so that when I glanced at a page of Ottoman printing, my comprehension was immediately caught in a bramble of symbols as impenetrable to me as a hedge of magic briars.

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Help out others

The best way to learn anything is to teach it.

There are two ways to go about that that I can think of. One is to tutor people. The second is to write a book and/or design a course.

That’s right . . . you’re on to me!

I’ll say more about tutoring elsewhere (under the tag 'coaching'). But for now I’ll suggest that you do it on a level platform. That is to say, don’t imagine that you are some sort of teacher. You don’t know it all. And you don’t know others as well as they know themselves. So be a little humble and make your sessions a partnership. Be a team player.

As for writing a book, the challenge is to give advice that is universal for all individuals. I believe that this is possible, but “these things must be done delicately . . .”