Mastering a new language takes years. I wanted to find a way to rapidly learn the relevant parts of the language that will allow me to express myself and exchange views on topics I care about. I looked for a shortcut as I thought that I could get away with only learning the most common phrases and words and be able to express myself in months and not years. Finding the lists of most common phrases or words is not very difficult today with all the available online texts that can be statistically analyzed. There are also many pre-existing frequency lists. The problem with these frequency lists is that they cover the most common texts for the people that wrote the underlying texts, not mine.
The advantage of such a list is that it gives a scope that one can master in a few months. The disadvantage is that even if you know the most used words you can’t build a proper sentence or express yourself in what is relevant to your own thoughts.
I thought about why I want to learn a new language. The answer for me was to learn to express my thoughts and discuss things that interest me.
So, for me the most obvious first step is to create in a language I know a summary of what I want to discuss in a new language. Then I will get it translated and spend a month or two learning it in each new language.
I thought about the outline and topics that I should prepare and came up with this list of topics. I hope it can be a useful starting point for anyone that wants to take a similar route.
1) An elevator pitch about myself. A short (half a page?) bio about who I am, what I do, Where I am from, where and when I was born and where I grew up. A short description of my main hobbies and traits.
2) Things that I like.
3) Things I don’t like
4) My detailed CV (2-3 pages)
5) Topics I like to talk about:
5.1) Topic 1 - Topic overview (one page)
5.1.1.1-5.1.1.n ) Statements I want to make about the topic, quotes etc.
5.1.2.1-5.1.2.n ) Questions I want to ask about a topic with some possible answers
6) People
6.1.1) Person name and relation to me
6.1,2) His or her short bio
6.1.3.1 - 6.1.3.n) Shared experiences or anecdotes
6.1.4.1 - 6.1.4.n) Short simulated dialogs with this person (to help create example for wide variety of dialogs with different types of people such as business partners, friends and family)
7) My plans for the future
Trips
8.1 - 8.n) Simulated Trip Place (for example coffee shop or convention center)
8.1.1.1 - 8.1.1.n) Statements about each location and sentences unique to that type of location.
8.1.2.1 - 8.1.2.n) Simulated dialogs in each location for most common things I would need to talk about there.
9) General
9.1) Numbers
9.2) Dates
9.3) Relativity statements (left, right, up, down, big, small, good, bad…)
9.4) Units (weight, height, currency, etc.)
9.5) Places (both type of places such as restaurant or hotel as well as specific places)
This is just an initial brain dump… I would love to get responses before I sit and actually build my personal vocabulary trainer and translate it.
I am aiming for about 30 pages of text that will give me a good foundation to express myself in other languages and that I should be able to master in a couple of months per language.
