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I’ve been a big fan of learning languages for awhile now. Did some German and Russian in HS. Some Russian and Bulgarian in college. Messed around with French once when I was a kid. Learned some Jamaican Patois one spring break (much to the amusement of the locals in the villages I was visiting). Plowed through some Pimsleur CDs right before my trip to Japan (I’ll write more about that sometime, the general feeling was that the CDs were worth it).

Here’s a great article on language acquisition. While I’m a bit of a convert to the Pimsleur “no grammar” method, I do like Timothy’s quick teardown technique for languages. Can’t hurt. And if you don’t have the audio resources on hand or find yourself in a situation where language acquisition is unexpectedly required, I think his approach would come in handy.

I’d love to see more on this, particularly if it can be broken down into the fastest possible approach. Acquire expressive independence in a half-hour, say. Obviously you’d still not be a “fluent” speaker. But in what traveling I’ve done it seems to me that people appreciate a good faith effort enough to help you improve and treat you very well.

Before we went to Japan I got some Pimsleur lessons on CD as a result of a long ago reference by a friend.

Having studies a couple languages before I was eager to give these a try. What I loved about it was a complete disregard for grammar, rules, syntax and all the other stuff you learned in 7th grade (i.e. all the stuff you were quizzed on about 12 years after you learned to effectively communicate in your native language).
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