Notes on Language Learning

10/29/2025 - I wrote this essay as a way to clarify some thoughts on the meta-design practices I’d recommend to someone (or my former self) as they begin their quest toward foreign language fluency.

Introduction

The conversation about language acquisition suffers from many of the same distortions as other creative fields when bureaucrats and academics come to dominate the conversation more than practitioners. Non-practitioners attempt to justify their existence by neurotically classifying and codifying the field into sterility and non-reality. The resultant distortions appear especially hideous in a natural, creative, and organic process, such as human communication. It is a fact that action must precede classification. To think or behave otherwise leads to the propagation of undue falsehoods, misunderstandings, and unnecessarily obscure points of entry.

In the context of language, the major fallacy is to believe that a foreign language is simply a limited set of triggers or a convoluted word-replacement game. Instead, a language is a set of restrictions by which you can generate thought, and therefore construct a new reality. In this way, it resembles a program. The purpose of learning a language is not to parrot all that has been previously stated, but for use as an engine toward new expressions.

Frustrated, non-creative people who have not truly expressed themselves in their native language tend to project their stagnation and creative infertility by assuming their paradigm is immutable and factual. Clearly, this point of view is false as it leads to an infinite regress. If we can only echo melodies, who sang the first note?

This bureacratic obsession with rigidity manifests itself in the ambiguity or reality-displaced end goals many language students come to have, as they either 1) belong to this class of non-creativitiy themselves, or 2) have been influenced or bullied by a non-creative teacher. Their goals, then, become odd. They are over-planned and unsustainable. They want to pass their test, vaguely "know German", appear impressive, or add a point to their resume.

Now, imagine if a baby was born, and rather than speaker with its parents or describe its emotions, it preferred instead to memorize the dictionary. Clearly, this would make for an absurd child. Yet, a great deal of language students immediately commit themselves to a similarly foolish end. They reject the innate, inseparable humanity ingrained in language for a false, mechanical illusion.

It is additionally strange when you consider that everyone has already experienced learning a language from nothing. Therefore, your first job is to dispense with this ambiguity of an end goal as quickly as possible, reference your previous success, and repeatedly simplify. I repeat - (and this is applicable in all design processes), the difficulty in learning a language in not in increasing your willpower or study material, but rather, disengaging from the continual allure to increase complexity. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Leverage

We begin with the idea that language use, like painting, isn’t something that someone necessarily “learns” (although there may be a canon to familiarize oneself with), but rather, is to be understood as a tool to create continually refined iterations of self expression. With this end in mind, we can utilize other’s experiences to leverage our limited resources and energy to get nearer to this accuracy of self expression.

I am referencing Noam Chomsky’s idea of the Poverty of the Stimulus, which states that children are not sufficiently exposed to enough linguistic information to gain a full understanding of their first language, and yet, they universally acquire the ability to construct complex, novel, and valid sentences.

In Noam Chomsky’s view, this is evidence for a universal grammar, or, at minimum, humanity's natural disposition toward linguistic competency. However, discussions of these topics are outside the domain of this article. I am referencing this concept to reinforce my recommedation toward simplification. Language acquisition is a natural process.

80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is states that 20% of the data in a collection is responsible for 80% of the outcome. The idea initially came from an early sociologist who observed that wealth inequality tends to skew this way - 20% of the population controlled 80% of the wealth. It was also observed amongst early biologists who noted that 20% of their crops made up the majority (80%) of their total yield.

In the context of language, our rate of learning accelerate if we understand what 20% of the material we need to focus our efforts on. This is intuitively understood by educators - although children at home understand words, we teach them the alphabet because it is such a high-leverage piece of knowledge. In the context of words, it is much more intelligent and efficient to begin learn the 500 most common words in any language before moving onto more difficult, specialized language, without having some type of justification for doing so. What would that justification look like? Perhaps, for example, you are taking cooking classes in your target language. In that context, as a disproportionate fraction of your reality in that language will be related to cooking, it makes a lot of sense to focus your efforts on culinary terminology.

Skin in the Game

Natural language communication comes with a rapid feedback loop. This fact should not be lamented as painful, but rather leveraged as a fortunate advantage. As the end goal is productive self-expression and human interaction, you should communicate with another person as soon as possible, even day 1, in an incredibly rudimentary way. You will instantly fail. Rather than lament this fact, however, you should see it for the gift that it is. You found a shortcut to the knowledge of the exact weakness you have, showing you where you need to focus and improve. Other domains lack such instantaneous exposure of ignorance.

Knowledge is attained, legitimized, and strengthened by repetition and relevance. Words, phrases, and grammatical concepts that I learned organically (i.e., via interacting with other people), stayed with me. Words that I attempted to learn from flashcards or lists did not, unless there was a corresponding real life experience to use it with soon after.

Being in the presence of other people who can speak the language you want to learn is another extremely high-leverage position in learning languages. I frequently hear from foreign-language university students that they learned much, much more within 3 months of living in a different country than they did throughout their entire degree program. Since being with native speakers is so effective, you should prioritize social cohesion and aim to reduce friction to utilize this. This means that practicing comprehension (listening to people talk to each other), grammar, pronunciation, then vocabulary, in that order, should be your priority.

As you converse with native speakers in your native language, it is not atypical that new vocabulary words should appear that need to be explained. Although more rare, it is also common that some words are mispronounced. It is a virtual impossibility, though, that someone makes a major grammatical error. In fact, once you realize this, you can probably spot a few people in your life that get by on an absolute minimum of vocabulary. You can do this, as long as the pronunciation and grammar, especially, are impeccable. This is how children as young as 6 can be completely ignorant and have an extremely tiny vocabulary, yet no one will doubt that they know their language. Vocabulary can be explained by means of circumlocution, but most native speakers are probably unaware of the grammatical complexity of their own language. Therefore, its more effective to focus on grammar in your own time.

Additional Skills / Tips

Learning your first additional language is especially difficult because it requires additional skills on top of the target language. Not only must you learn the complexities of your target language, you must also learn the meta-linguistic and grammatical concepts in order to teach yourself. (Remember though, as stated in the beginning: action always come second to categorization).

You must also learn to overcome your social anxiety. When I was a language teacher, many of my students would speak to me in extremely lucid English, but would be riddled with self-doubt and refuse to communicate with me based on their intense embarrasment. It is entirely non-intuitive, but true: if you don’t sound foolish to yourself, you will sound foolish to everyone else.

Translation

Unless you’re specifically studying translation, or aiming to be a good translator, it’s probably a green flag if you find yourself getting worse at translation as you progress in your language learning. Why? Because this is evidence that you are actually thinking in your target language, which is the goal.

Resources

Resources are always supplemental. The best resources that you can have are:

a natural attitude of fearlessness
the ability to reduce your own ego, and
access to a community of individuals who speak your target language.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t study, but rather that studying should never the end in it of itself. Study, at best, is always referencing a real life situation you were in, or expect yourself to be in. It is never abstracted for its own purpose.

Otherwise, books, videos, and classes are all effective. There’s also audio tapes which others recommend, but I have no personal experience with, so I will not comment on them.