The traditional method for learning a foreign language is inefficient. Language hacker Tim Ferriss gives a better way. You can learn any language by remember these following 6 sentences (in the language you are trying to learn) that Tim Ferriss outlined:
The apple is red.
It is John's apple.
I give John the apple.
We give him the apple.
He gives it to John.
She gives it to him.
So why are these 6 sentences so important? According to Tim Ferriss, there are several reasons why:
- They help you see if and how a verb is conjugated in the language. Quite a few languages conjugate verbs (Japanese and Spanish to name a couple) so this is an important element to recognize.
- The sentence helps you see the fundamental sentence structure. Is the language an SVO language (subject-verb-object) like Chinese or is it an SOV language (subject-object-verb) like Japanese.
- The sentences expose noun-cases that certain languages have. There are 5 noun cases total and the case of the noun tells us about the position of the noun in a sentence.
Additionally, Tim Ferriss also gives another two sentences that expose whether or not auxillary verbs exist in the language. An auxillary verb helps a main verb express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. The two sentences are:
I must give it to him.
I want to give it to her.
