#type/zk/zettel # [[Learning a language is like playing an open world RPG]] [[Johnny Harris, 2021-03-11|Johnny Harris]] compared learning a language with the idea of a video game map. I would take this analogy even a step further and express language learning as an open world RPG, such as [[Breath of the Wild]]. Language learning is not a linear game where beating the game means achieving a certain pre-defined goal. It's a giant open world game where there are many areas to explore, skills to level up, and achievements to unlock. You can play the game in whatever way you like. You can set your own goals: some people like speedrunning to defeat some boss, other people like collecting all the golden nuggets, while yet others love diving into certain side stories. For example, in language learning, you might be interested in a certain genre of movies or TV shows. Then you can try to first unlock all the skills you need to be able to watch them. Then after you've unlocked those, you realize you only need to unlock a couple other skills to learn to understand daily life conversations. If you're not interested in formal or academic writing, you can leave all skills related to grammar untouched. If you're just interested in consuming content, you don't need to practice speaking. If you ever want to unlock the final boss of fluency, you can always acquire the speaking skills later, and it'll be much easier if you are already like level 99 on basically everything else. If your goal is to be able to speak with native speakers as soon as possible, sure go ahead to learn speaking as one of the first skills. You'll realize it's difficult, but not impossible. Some people beat the Zelda end boss without completing any other part of the main story line, because they managed to become really good at fighting somehow. It seems that everybody has their own opinion about what is the best way to learn a language: Steve Kaufmann, Ari in Beijing, Tim Ferriss, Johnny Harris, and the rest of YouTube. In reality, there's a million ways to do it, and no single best way. Find the way that works for you, and try to have fun along the way. If you lose interest in a game, you'll stop playing it. If you don't have fun or a sense of accomplishment while learning a language, you won't keep up for long. I learned Chinese the Johnny Harris way: first speed run a couple hundred words of vocab and then grind on speaking. I was telling taxi drivers where I wanted to go, ordering food in restaurants: navigating in daily life with Chinese language was the name of the game. One of the first areas of vocab I unlocked was "words you find on a restaurant menu". I also spent some time grinding pronunciation, because I knew it would be easier for me to remember words properly if I could get them in my head with the right sound the first time around. For Japanese, I took a very different approach. I was basically just interested in watching Japanese content, mostly anime. So the name of the game was content, no goal for speaking. I watched so much anime, naturally got interested in the language, and as I watched more, I realized my listening capability went up. As my listening skill (language sense) came to about level 30 and my grammar was still lagging at level 1 or 2, I felt naturally inclined to search for rules that made sense of my feeling for the language. And if a grammar rule clicks into place for something you already have a feeling about, it'll be so much easier to remember. So no matter which direction you take in the game, it'll always be easier to make progress if you improve some of your skills. If your DEF is level 99, you can go to fight stronger enemies, so that your ATK will level up more quickly. So years after I learned some Japanese for the first time, I actually went to the country. I picked up the basic "restaurant" speak in no time. In a bout of interest in Japanese, I had acquired the relatively easy "hiragana" skill early on. That, in combination with my skill "Chinese characters" that I acquired from playing the Chinese language campaign, was enough to be able to find dishes I want to try and say "this one please". If they say "Sorry, we're sold out of that at the moment", I'd totally comprehend cause my listening at this point is like level 50, and with my speaking level 4, again I'd be able to reply with a simple "Oh, then I want this", pointing at another dish. Conclusion. Find ways to improve language skills in a way that motivates you to keep going. Don't worry about if your way is the right way or not, skills in one area will always help you when you move onto the next area. You just need to keep going. --- Date:: [[2022-12-15|2022-12-1]] Sources:: [[Johnny Harris, 2021-03-11]] Continuation:: Branches:: See also::