Benny Lewis Interview

Benny Lewis runs the world's largest language learning blog at Fluent in 3 Months and is currently promoting his most recent book with a worldwide tour. Read on to see why he thinks learning Mandarin isn't as hard as everyone thinks, and why students of Mandarin tend to over-rate Mandarin's difficulty.

You have written that Spanish, as your first foreign language, was the toughest for you to learn. Since then, what language has given you the most difficulty?

It's a somewhat obvious point missed by many people, but a language's difficulty depends not just on its own grammatical and vocabulary differences from your native language, but also on other factors such as your devotion to the task and passion for it, learning strategy and other such things rarely considered.

Spanish was the hardest language I ever learned because I spent so long learning it the wrong way; studying with a fear of speaking before I was "ready" for such a long time. Once I got over this unhelpful "perfectionist" mentality, each language got easier and easier. Even learning notorious languages like Hungarian or Chinese were not as huge a challenge as learning my first foreign language. Your first language doesn't have to be hard, we make it hard ourselves.

Since then, no language itself has been the most difficult, but my circumstances has made it harder. I was ill the summer I wanted to learn Turkish, so that challenge was too difficult for me to really get into, a lack of resources to help me advance in Egyptian Arabic kept me at a plateau, a lack of time (due to needing to focus on my upcoming published book) kept me back in Japanese, etc.

But ignoring all other factors like these, no language itself has ever given me more difficulty than any other. I don't find comparisons helpful. If you are learning one particular language, focus on that and forget others, since they are irrelevant to you!

Aside from using only your target language to communicate, what are some other hacks or heuristics you use to learn a new language rapidly?

Make as many mistakes as you possibly can! I aim to make at least two hundred mistakes a day, and this forces me to truly get out there and use the language. Communication, not eloquence, is the priority as a beginner learner. Once you have momentum, progress becomes way easier.
Otherwise, an effective use of mnemonics can help a lot to make sure no words are stuck on the tip of your tongue. Memrise.com is a great resource to help with some fantastic examples for many languages.

What specifically about Mandarin Chinese do you enjoy? Similarly, what frustrates you about it?

The grammar of Mandarin Chinese was such a relief!! After mostly learning European languages, a lot of mental acrobatics are necessary to form sentences that aren't hideous, like verb conjugation, article agreement, noun genders, and much more. While Mandarin Chinese certainly has grammar and things like correct word order to learn, it's a language where you can put one word after the other (once you know that word), and the sentence is correct.

Chinese learners who want to paint their task as the hardest compared to European languages play this part down so much, but it's such a breath of fresh air to just say one word after another and have a genuine sentence nearly all the time. It's more complicated than that of course, but speaking Mandarin was a pleasure thanks to simply needing to remember a word and its tone being the bulk of my work.

But yes, the tones are certainly frustrating! That slowed me down a lot in the first weeks. Luckily, people overplay their importance too, when discouraging beginners in unhelpful scare tactics. If your sentence is big enough, the key word can have wrong tones, and all the surrounding context feeds the listener with what it's likely to be, the same way an incorrectly pronounced word in a European language (that sounds something like what it's supposed to sound like) can still be understood.

Yes, an isolated word on an island in an exam like situation with the wrong tone is incomprehensible, but the real world provides way more context than that. This meant that, as frustrating as learning to speak and understand tones can be, a little guesswork on the speaker and listeners' part can ease you in before you have mastered it.

In what regions of China do you find it most difficult to understand Mandarin? Any regional accents that you really like?

I found that people attempted to adjust to standard Mandarin with me whenever possible, and this was greatly appreciated. But there were plenty of exceptions! While on the train from Shanghai to Xi'an I came across many fascinating accents. One lady on the train gave me the impression that she was impossible to understand at first, until I suddenly realized that she was simply replacing the "n" sound at the start of syllables with an "l" sound, as the major dialect difference that I could detect, and everything suddenly clicked!
She would have been from somewhere between Wuhan and Chengdu.

In an article explaining why learning Chinese is not as hard as everyone things, you wrote, "If you already speak Chinese and disagree with the premise of Chinese not being super-duper hard compared to every other language and are angry at me for daring to take it off this untouchable pedestal you’ve placed it on, then TOUGH LUCK."  Do you feel that students of Mandarin tend to make a bigger deal out of its difficulty than, say, students of another “hard” language like Arabic do?

Definitely. Sorry if this offends people, but I felt a great wave of discouragement when learning Mandarin, whereas Arabic, Hungarian, Quechua and other languages I've tackled that are as different to English/Indo-European languages as Mandarin is, that I felt was more influenced by a major chip on their shoulder than anything real. ALL of this discouragement came from learners, never native speakers.

There is this general aura that Chinese is "the hardest language in the world", and if you've put the years into learning it, you may want to "knock some sense" into someone enthusiastically starting who feels they can reach some kind of useful level in a short time. Yes, of course mastering Chinese can take many years. But mastering any language takes many years.

Generally, learners of Chinese that gave me so much discouragement had not ever learned a European language to mastery other than their native tongue. Their guesses that Spanish/French were "super easy" in comparison were based on glancing at a newspaper and seeing lots of similar words, but if you look at a Chinese newspaper you can't possibly read it quickly.

Yes indeed. But is everyone's goal to read a newspaper? Definitely not. If you are not as big into reading, and focus on speaking, then Mandarin (with less focus on the characters) is surprisingly manageable and easy to get your teeth into. This statement is nothing but sacriligeous to many Chinese learners, and so you will see my passion to challenge the status quo come across in my post. I'm not suggestion Chinese is easy, but I am definitely more interested in encouraging learners than discouraging them.

In that same post, you went over some of the things that make Mandarin easy to learn, like its pictographic nature and relatively consistent grammar. What aspect of Mandarin do you find hardest?

See above about frustrating in Mandarin.

In our audience, we have a lot of people who want to learn a language for the same reason you do- to connect with people. There are also a lot of readers who see Mandarin as a way to get ahead in their careers.. Considering the thousands of study hours required to achieve “fluency” in Mandarin, what your recommendation be to somebody studying Mandarin for its ROI in their career?

One controversial aspect of my advice for Chinese learners, that can be equally applicable to those learning it for career advancement, is to ditch Hanzi and focus entirely on learning how to speak Mandarin via pinyin. If you want to learn Chinese to negotiate business dealings, then (depending on your career) you may be more likely to do it in business meetings than via written emails. All the Hanzi in the world won't help you if you are face-to-face with a potential business lead; speaking confidently will.

Focus on speaking first, and then get to learning Hanzi. Things change dramatically, and it becomes easier to learn characters when you have the context of being able to speak the language. It's how Chinese children themselves learn it. No baby ever knows how to write 妈妈 before they know how to say mama.

At what point were you able to support yourself entirely from your blog? What would your advice be to aspiring bloggers looking to monetize their writing?

One year after I launched the blog. Ironically, what worked the best for me, was that I had no intention to monetize my blog and focused on the message and inspiring an audience. A blog that doesn't feel like it's selling to you, comes across as more authentic, and you get tonnes of free traffic from people sharing your content with their friends.

Focus on your message above all else, and monetizing may actually take care of itself. But that is a lot of work. I'm a full time blogger and was for the entire year that I didn't earn a cent from it.

What does it mean to you that as many as 90% of the world’s languages could become extinct by the year 2100?

This is a tragedy. I've learned languages that are not the dominant one in their country, and they have such rich cultures and history. I'm not as pessimistic as most people however. My own country's language, Irish (Gaeilge), has boomed in the last 2 decades thanks to the web, with several stations of streamed radio, blogs in Irish, podcasts, Google translate adapting the language, and forums just in the language.
I suspect this projection is based on extrapolating the trend of the last century. That is not how this century is going to play out ;)

You are about to release a new book on language learning. What can we expect to find in it, and how will it be different from your earlier book, Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World?

That title you gave is actually my new book. I presume you mean how is it different to my ebook?

My ebook was written in just 6 weeks and proofread by a single person before it went live. The print book is the result of two years of setting it up, writing, rewriting, editing, researching, interviewing, and going through dozens of eyes, including many linguistics (with Masters/PhDs in linguistics). The quality is much higher.

As well as this, the content is more expansive, since my ebook is about starting to learn a language, but "Fluent in 3 months" actually goes on to Mastery and then to how to learn multiple languages.

What was the most challenging part for you in writing this book?

A published book follows very different standards to an e-book. I'm honoured that mine is published by Collins (the same guys who make us so many wonderful dictionaries and language courses), and they had a lot of feedback for the book to fit their standards to be read internationally. I had to be very flexible to change my casual blog writing style to work with a very different audience, but it paid off and I feel like this book is going to be a roadmap for language learners for a very long time. Many experienced polyglots have told me that they have never seen language learning explained in such a straightforward way to newcomers.
I also incorporated a lot of their advice, since I don't want this to be about "converting" people to the "Benny approach", but to open the doors to many possible approaches to language learning, and I mention other learners throughout the book.

Where can we find a list of your book tour appearances?

Right here:  http://www.fluentin3months.com/book-tour/
Looking forward to meeting passionate language learners in person!

You have written that Spanish, s your first foreign language, was the toughest for you to learn. Since then, what language has given you the most difficulty?

It's a somewhat obvious point missed by many people, but a language's difficulty depends not just on its own grammatical and vocabulary differences from your native language, but also on other factors such as your devotion to the task and passion for it, learning strategy and other such things rarely considered.Spanish was the hardest language I ever learned because I spent so long learning it the wrong way; studying with a fear of speaking before I was "ready" for such a long time. Once I got over this unhelpful "perfectionist" mentality, each language got easier and easier. Even learning notorious languages like Hungarian or Chinese were not as huge a challenge as learning my first foreign language. Your first language doesn't have to be hard, we make it hard ourselves.

Since then, no language itself has been the most difficult, but my circumstances has made it harder. I was ill the summer I wanted to learn Turkish, so that challenge was too difficult for me to really get into, a lack of resources to help me advance in Egyptian Arabic kept me at a plateau, a lack of time (due to needing to focus on my upcoming published book) kept me back in Japanese, etc.

But ignoring all other factors like these, no language itself has ever given me more difficulty than any other. I don't find comparisons helpful. If you are learning one particular language, focus on that and forget others, since they are irrelevant to you! 

Aside from using only your target language to communicate, what are some other hacks or heuristics you use to learn a new language rapidly?

Make as many mistakes as you possibly can! I aim to make at least two hundred mistakes a day, and this forces me to truly get out there and use the language. Communication, not eloquence, is the priority as a beginner learner. Once you have momentum, progress becomes way easier.Otherwise, an effective use of mnemonics can help a lot to make sure no words are stuck on the tip of your tongue. Memrise.com is a great resource to help with some fantastic examples for many languages. 

What specifically about Mandarin Chinese do you enjoy? Similarly, what frustrates you about it?

The grammar of Mandarin Chinese was such a relief!! After mostly learning European languages, a lot of mental acrobatics are necessary to form sentences that aren't hideous, like verb conjugation, article agreement, noun genders, and much more. While Mandarin Chinese certainly has grammar and things like correct word order to learn, it's a language where you can put one word after the other (once you know that word), and the sentence is correct. Chinese learners who want to paint their task as the hardest compared to European languages play this part down so much, but it's such a breath of fresh air to just say one word after another and have a genuine sentence nearly all the time. It's more complicated than that of course, but speaking Mandarin was a pleasure thanks to simply needing to remember a word and its tone being the bulk of my work.But yes, the tones are certainly frustrating! That slowed me down a lot in the first weeks. Luckily, people overplay their importance too, when discouraging beginners in unhelpful scare tactics. If your sentence is big enough, the key word can have wrong tones, and all the surrounding context feeds the listener with what it's likely to be, the same way an incorrectly pronounced word in a European language (that sounds something like what it's supposed to sound like) can still be understood.Yes, an isolated word on an island in an exam like situation with the wrong tone is incomprehensible, but the real world provides way more context than that. This meant that, as frustrating as learning to speak and understand tones can be, a little guesswork on the speaker and listeners' part can ease you in before you have mastered it.

In what regions of China do you find it most difficult to understand Mandarin? Any regional accents that you really like?

I found that people attempted to adjust to standardMandarin with me whenever possible, and this was greatly appreciated. But there were plenty of exceptions! While on the train from Shanghai to Xi'an I came across many fascinating accents. One lady on the train gave me the impression that she was impossible to understand at first, until I suddenly realized that she was simply replacing the "n" sound at the start of syllables with an "l" sound, as the major dialect difference that I could detect, and everything suddenly clicked!She would have been from somewhere between Wuhan and Chengdu.

In an article explaining why learning Chinese is not as hard as everyone things, you wrote, "If you already speak Chinese and disagree with the premise of Chinese not being super-duper hard compared to every other language and are angry at me for daring to take it off this untouchable pedestal you’ve placed it on, then TOUGH LUCK."  Do you feel that students of Mandarin tend to make a bigger deal out of its difficulty than, say, students of another “hard” language like Arabic do?

Definitely. Sorry if this offends people, but I felt a great wave of discouragement when learning Mandarin, whereas Arabic, Hungarian, Quechua and other languages I've tackled that are as different to English/Indo-European languages as Mandarin is, that I felt was more influenced by a major chip on their shoulder than anything real. ALL of this discouragement came from learners, never native speakers.There is this general aura that Chinese is "the hardest language in the world", and if you've put the years into learning it, you may want to "knock some sense" into someone enthusiastically starting who feels they can reach some kind of useful level in a short time. Yes, of course mastering Chinese can take many years. But mastering any language takes many years.Generally, learners of Chinese that gave me so much discouragement had not ever learned a European language to mastery other than their native tongue. Their guesses that Spanish/French were "super easy" in comparison were based on glancing at a newspaper and seeing lots of similar words, but if you look at a Chinese newspaper you can't possibly read it quickly.Yes indeed. But is everyone's goal to read a newspaper? Definitely not. If you are not as big into reading, and focus on speaking, then Mandarin (with less focus on the characters) is surprisingly manageable and easy to get your teeth into. This statement is nothing but sacriligeous to many Chinese learners, and so you will see my passion to challenge the status quo come across in my post. I'm not suggestion Chinese is easy, but I am definitely more interested in encouraging learners than discouraging them. 

In that same post, you went over some of the things that make Mandarin easy to learn, like its pictographic nature and relatively consistent grammar. What aspect of Mandarin do you find hardest?

See above about frustrating in Mandarin.

In our audience, we have a lot of people who want to learn a language for the same reason you do- to connect with people. There are also a lot of readers who see Mandarin as a way to get ahead in their careers.. Considering the thousands of study hours required to achieve “fluency” in Mandarin, what your recommendation be to somebody studying Mandarin for its ROI in their career?

One controversial aspect of my advice for Chinese learners, that can be equally applicable to those learning it for career advancement, is to ditch Hanzi and focus entirely on learning how to speak Mandarin via pinyin. If you want to learn Chinese to negotiate business dealings, then (depending on your career) you may be more likely to do it in business meetings than via written emails. All the Hanzi in the world won't help you if you are face-to-face with a potential business lead; speaking confidently will.

Focus on speaking first, and then get to learning Hanzi. Things change dramatically, and it becomes easier to learn characters when you have the context of being able to speak the language. It's how Chinese children themselves learn it. No baby ever knows how to write 妈妈 before they know how to say mama. 

At what point were you able to support yourself entirely from your blog? What would your advice be to aspiring bloggers looking to monetize their writing?

One year after I launched the blog. Ironically, what worked the best for me, was that I had no intention to monetize my blog and focused on the message and inspiring an audience. A blog that doesn't feel like it's selling to you, comes across as more authentic, and you get tonnes of free traffic from people sharing your content with their friends.

Focus on your message above all else, and monetizing may actually take care of itself. But that is a lot of work. I'm a full time blogger and was for the entire year that I didn't earn a cent from it. 

What does it mean to you that as many as 90% of the world’s languages could become extinct by the year 2100?

This is a tragedy. I've learned languages that are not the dominant one in their country, and they have such rich cultures and history. I'm not as pessimistic as most people however. My own country's language, Irish (Gaeilge), has boomed in the last 2 decades thanks to the web, with several stations of streamed radio, blogs in Irish, podcasts, Google translate adapting the language, and forums just in the language.
I suspect this projection is based on extrapolating the trend of the last century. That is not how this century is going to play out ;) 

You are about to release a new book on language learning. What can we expect to find in it, and how will it be different from your earlier book, Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World?

That title you gave is actually my new book. I presume you mean how is it different to my ebook?

My ebook was written in just 6 weeks and proofread by a single person before it went live. The print book is the result of two years of setting it up, writing, rewriting, editing, researching, interviewing, and going through dozens of eyes, including many linguistics (with Masters/PhDs in linguistics). The quality is much higher.

As well as this, the content is more expansive, since my ebook is about starting to learn a language, but "Fluent in 3 months" actually goes on to Mastery and then to how to learn multiple languages. 

What was the most challenging part for you in writing this book?

A published book follows very different standards to an e-book. I'm honoured that mine is published by Collins (the same guys who make us so many wonderful dictionaries and language courses), and they had a lot of feedback for the book to fit their standards to be read internationally. I had to be very flexible to change my casual blog writing style to work with a very different audience, but it paid off and I feel like this book is going to be a roadmap for language learners for a very long time. Many experienced polyglots have told me that they have never seen language learning explained in such a straightforward way to newcomers.I also incorporated a lot of their advice, since I don't want this to be about "converting" people to the "Benny approach", but to open the doors to many possible approaches to language learning, and I mention other learners throughout the book. 

Where can we find a list of your book tour appearances?

Right here:  http://www.fluentin3months.com/book-tour/

Looking forward to meeting passionate language learners in person!