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 such a natural, creative, and organic process as human communication. It is a fact that action must precede classification. To think or behave otherwise leads to a litany of confusion.

In the context of language, the major fallacy is to believe that a foreign language is a convoluted word-replacement game or an expansive set of dialogue options. Instead, a language is a set of restrictions by which you can generate thought, and therefore construct reality.

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 all-encompassing. Clearly, this point of view is false, as its premise 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. Students tend to either

belong to this class of non-creative individuals themselves, or
be influenced or bullied by a teacher who belongs to this class of non-creative individuals.

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 speak 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 usage 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.

Definition

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.

Leverage

With this definition in mind, utilizing different forms of leverage will allow us to optimize, quicken, and strengthen our ability to use language. Always attempt to

Focus your studies on your reality,
Find the highest leverage method of getting there

The second point 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. Knowledge of the alphabet allows us to more rapidly learn every other word in the language.

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? It looks like the first point, which is to focus on your reality. 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 (or especially) on day 1. Your emotions will react violently. Rather than lament this fact, however, you should see it for the gift that it is. Pain avoidance is great motivation. Failed social interactions forma shortcut to the direct knowledge you need to study.

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 young children can be completely ignorant, yet no one will doubt that they know their own 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

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.

You will probably have to learn some level of socialization / acculturation as well. Your (probably unconscious) tricks for socialization, like telling jokes, referencing shared cultural experiences, memes, or idioms, will probably not work in your target language. You will have to become more self-aware, patient, and

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.