Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

FORVO A giant database of over 2 million recordings in over 300 languages. You can find a native speaker recording of almost any word in almost any language, and if it’s not there, you can request a recording, and you’ll get it within a few days. It’s free, and it’s wonderful. Use it to learn the pronunciation of your target language. Forvo.com

YOUTUBE A source for pronunciation advice and information. While it can be somewhat unreliable, many of the tutorials you’ll find there (if you search for, say, “How to trill an r ” or “the Arabic A’yn”) have been created by native speakers and can help you hear and produce new sounds. If you’re going to start somewhere, start with my series (linke

Any time you have a lot of trouble with a word or grammatical rule, just make a few new cards on a closely related theme, and it’ll become much easier to remember.

You learn a word today and then shelve it for a while. When it comes back, you’ll try to recall it, and then shelve it again, on and on until you couldn’t possibly forget. While you’re waiting for your old words to return, you can learn new words and send them off into the future, where you’ll meet them again and work them into your long-term memor

Madness. How can taking an identical test three times in a row produce such a large effect? Odd as it is, this follows rules of common sense. When you study by reading through a list multiple times, you’re practicing reading, not recall. If you want to get better at recalling something, you should practice recalling it. Our blank sheet of paper, wh

Learn thirty flash cards a day. As you learn them, you’ll tell your SRS what you remember. If you’re using Anki, you’ll be clicking one of the buttons that correspond to “Yup, I remember” or “Oops, I forgot,” and it will automatically schedule your cards accordingly, so that you review each of your cards near the ideal moment, right before you forg

Mnemonic images work for reasons you might already surmise: we’re really good at remembering images, particularly when those images are violent, sexual, funny, or any combination of the three. While “gender” can conjure up some images—you can probably imagine a male dog—it falls flat on others (a neuter knee—meh). Vivid, action-packed verbs are muc

To play the Memory game, you’ll spend a few seconds looking for any memory about your word that comes to mind. It could be your childhood cat or your friend’s T-shirt. Try to keep the new word in mind rather than the translation. You’ll make some weird English-French hybrid sentence like “The last time I saw my grand-mère (grandmother) was last wee

Language learning is a form of strength training for your brain. Not only does your brain get stronger, it gets healthier, too. Bilingual brains are more resistant to the wear and tear of age. Studies show a marked delay in the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease for bilinguals. On average, elderly bilinguals will show symptoms of dementia fi