How I learned 4 languages in 1 year

I learned 4 languages in 2020:
- German
- Russian
- Romanian
- Italian

That's the year I developed.

The Natural Language Learning system.

Let me tell you how I did it.

Ok I could already speak German in 2020.

But I vastly improved my level so it still counts.

Like I said it was the year 2020.

All the Covid drama was about to happen.

I had moved to Berlin to work in the Spanish Embassy.

One of my goals for that year was.

To speak German like a native speaker.

The problem was that everyone spoke Spanish at the office.

Yes we did a lot of reading and writing in German.

But apart from a few phonecalls.

We barely spoke any German during the work day.

But at least I was getting Massive Input with the reading.

My coworkers' social life consistent on going out together.

In a big loud Spanish speaking group.

I avoided them like the plague.

I didn't move to Germany to speak Spanish.

I needed speaking practice with native speakers to keep improving.

I started looking for events and language exchanges.

Going out and meeting people several times a week.

That's how I made German and Russian friends.

Parli italiano?

That's also how I found a German-Italian language exchange.

Italian sounds fun and I had nothing better to do Sunday afternoon.

So I started showing up to those as well.

I could understand a decent amount.

Because of how similar it is to Spanish.

I started listening to a history podcast in Italian.

And soon I could understand pretty much everything.

But I couldn't speak at all at first.

Then I had an idea.

I started taking notes during the meetups.

Preparing lists of sentences for the next meetup.

Memorising and rehearsing them at home.

If you've done the NLL course I'm sure this technique sounds familiar.

By the end of the year I was able to have long conversations.

About any topic in Italian with no trouble at all.

языковая школа - пустая трата времени

I was living in Lichtenberg, East Berlin.

You get lots of immigrants from Eastern Europe living there.

Particularly from the former Soviet Union.

I also made Russian friends so I decided.

It was time to learn Russian.

One of my work colleagues recommended going to a Volkshochschule.

They would have cheap Russian classes there for sure.

And they did.

but I found out that German public education.

Was as boring and useless as the Spanish one.

Extremely slow paced, inpractical, grammar based.

You can go to those classes for a decade.

And not be able to understand or speak.

Russian's hard but you can learn it.

If you do it right.

I quit the VHS classes and started reading and listening instead.

Progress was slow but steady.

But there was another Eastern European language.

I learned much faster.

It turned out many in my neighbourhood were Moldovan.

They spoke both Russian and Romanian.

I had already been to Romania.

I liked the language and it is definitely easier than Russian.

Given that it is a Romance language.

Same thing: Massive Input, memorised sentences for conversation and started to speak to people.

What did the routine look like?

Essentually, Massive Input in all languages.

German mostly at work.

The other 3 reading at home for about an hour a day each.

Listening to podcasts in public transport and while working out.

Memorising lists of sentences for conversation in all 4 languages.

Using all 4 languages when going out and socialising several times a week.

Extremely simple routine but it worked.

But Mikel... Isn't learning all those languages at the same time confusing?

Absolutely not!

The key is to get enough practice with each one of them.

Daily reading and listening.

Daily speaking with someone or alone.

And you will be fine.