In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, you’ll learn the connection between Robin Williams and the most unusable Memory Palace in the world.

At least, the most unusable Memory Palace for me. And you’ll hear about why and how I’m trying to change it so that, even if it can’t be used, I can at least reduce the unhappy memories associated with it.

Program Notes

This week’s episode is based on a somewhat crazy email I sent out to Magnetic Memory Method Newsletter subscribers. For these program notes, I’m providing you that letter in its entirety.

What I’m referring to at the beginning of the newsletter doesn’t really matter. Let’s just say I wrote something a bit harsh and some people rightly called me out on it.

But there was madness behind my methods, and so I took the opportunity to explain the context behind the disruption.

And I think it’s a nice way to begin 2015 on a positive note.

Because when you listen to this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, you’ll find an idea about how to eliminate negative associations you may have with places that you would otherwise find impossible to use for the Method of Loci in a Memory Palace or any other mnemonic technique.

So without further adieu, here is that newsletter:

Dear Memorizers,

The following newsletter won’t teach you anything about memory skills.

But it will tell you about the one place that I will never, ever use as a Memory Palace.

If that’s of no interest to you, now would be the best time to stop reading.

If you’re curious, I’ll tell you a little bit about it.

First, though, a note about the message from the day before yesterday. Some people found it cool and said so. Others found it uncool.

And said so.

I’m not going to bandy around the bush with apologies and the like for those who felt offended. I’ll say only that you have a Bipolar operator at the helm of this ship – or at least that’s the label I given me in the Memory Palace I’ll never use.

What does this mean?

It means that when people say that I’m unprofessional …

They’re right.

Not that being professional was ever my intention.

I’m just some dude who writes about memory skills.

The same memory skills that without exaggeration saved my life.

Since Robin Williams died, I’ve been trying to find a way to say something about it.

And what some people considered yesterday’s meltdown (others heroic), finally provides an avenue.

Of sorts.

You see, Robin Williams crushed me, and more than a little. Taking his own life crushed a lot of people, but perhaps the Bipolar more than most.

Not that he self-identified. Carrie Fisher, another nut enjoying the all-too brief blasts of sun here at Club Manic, wrote that he doubted he was Bipolar.

Only, the way she recounts it, he doubted it in a rather Bipolar way.

Anyway, Robin Williams factors into the development of the Magnetic Memory Method in an important way. I’ve talked lots about how I discovered Memory Palaces during a deep depression. I’ve share how this lucky  enabled me to keep going through grad school and in the end succeed. And it’s an important part of the original of the MMM.

What I haven’t talked about much, if at all, is how this “Bipolar” journey got started in the first place.

In truth, who knows, but in the most evident way, I once upon a time wrote a poem.

A really long poem.

I still have it.

It was even published in a good old fashioned book.

Eventually.

Anyhow, I stayed up for 5 or 6 nights with almost no sleep writing this epic poem. When finished, I ran around campus with an armful of copies and gave it to friends and strangers alike. I also emailed it to all my professors and their teaching assistants.

Some of those professors expressed concern. One of the teaching assistants took it upon himself to catch me after a lecture. I had a face full of tears, beading at the brim from learning a bit too much about Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale.

It’s a beautiful poem.

Enough to tear your soul apart.

If your soul’s Magnetic, that is.

The assistant told me he’d read the poem. He said it was good in parts, but also extremely sexual. And violent.

Of course it is, I told him. I quoted Shelley. “I fall upon the thorns of life. I bleed.” What else did he expect from a young punk stuffing Romantic poetry down his maw like a butcher grinds pork?

The assistant wasn’t buying it. He thought I was sick and drew a map on the pack of this 30 page poem.

A map leading straight to a hospital.

A hospital in which I would remain for 3 months.

And it would have been longer if the doctor hadn’t mentioned the name “Robin Williams.”

I’ll bet it was part of the doctor’s schtick. He said it to everyone who refused to take their meds.

And yet the name that seemed to be little more than a therapeutic tool to this doctor proved useful. It was an extraordinarily persuasive way to convince me to pull out the poetry blocking my throat and start pouring the pills in.

Here’s exactly what he said:

“If Robin Williams had diabetes, do you think he’d refuse to take insulin? The only reason he survives the same condition that you’re in now and has become so successful is because he takes medication. The same medication we’re recommending to you now.”

I remember the scene well. I was high. Superman-high. I had every explanation in the world for why I could see the alphabet in everything. I knew the code that would unify the world if only the city of Toronto would evict its pigeons. I could break apart the number zero itself if only someone would recognize that I was the One.

Stuff like that.

Reams of it.

Scattered over pages.

Streaming from my mouth.

But with the name of Robin Williams in my ear, came the image of reason.

Because as the doctor carried on, his point was that I could still be crazy, and yet be sane.

I didn’t have to lose the energy, the rollercoaster rides along the rails of sloping ideas. And I could do it all without the piercing knife of dark that always landed.

Sooner or later, the knife of depression always returns to your heart. Picks at the front lobes just behind your eyes.

When you’re high, it’s impossible to remember.

When you’re low, it’s impossible to forget.

Well, the good doctor abused the name of Robin Williams that day, but I guess it’s a forgivable sin. I started taking their fancy little pills, after all, and soon after, they let me leave. Leave the one place I’ll never, ever use as a Memory Palace.

You can mark my Magnetic word on that.

Once out, I didn’t return to university for an entire year. I wanted to avoid the shame of seeing those same people before whom I had danced, inviting them to gaze upon the shores here at Club Manic.

But I got myself back on campus. And there I stayed, going up and down and up again. Superman one day, bumbling Clark Kent the next, never knowing when the super powers might return again.

Until I found Memory Palaces and memory techniques.

Mnemonics have never replaced the pills. Mnemonics never will.

But along with a lot of the other things I’ve connected with memory and tell you about from time to time, Memory Palaces provided a system. It’s faulty, as all systems must be from time to time. But it provides a decent set of checks and balances.

But then a week like last week comes along, and it’s hard.

It’s always hard to lose a giant.

A zany giant, but a gentle one.

Deep, deep sadness in his eyes.

Even when smiling.

Of course, none of this is an excuse or an apology for why I sometimes wind up sending weird editions of the Magnetic Memory Newsletter.

But more and more I’ve become outspoken and public about Manic Depression as much as I am about Memory Palaces.

Why?

Look, it’s a stupid term.

Not even Jimi Hendrix made it sound convincing. (Sorry, Jimi).

But the fact of the matter is that there are positive and negative ions that flow through the synapses between the neurons in the human brain.

Sometimes these go fast.

Sometimes they go slow.

In some of us, they go way too fast and then too slow.

Sometimes several times in the course of a single day.

And if there is one thing I can do – and am ethically bound to do – it’s to say something about it.

No, Memory Palaces aren’t the cure.

But they are a form of preparation.

As I’ve been reading post after post about Robin Williams, the advice to the afflicted is to “get help.”

Such advice couldn’t be more right and wrong at the same time.

Why?

Because when you’re in the high, you don’t need help. And you make sure everyone who tries to tell you otherwise knows it. The list of proofs in Club Manic are exceedingly long.

And when you’re down, sometimes it’s hard even to speak. It’s easy to paint the mouth, but impossible to paint the scream going on inside.

You’ve got to prepare.

I recommend adding things like the Magnetic Memory Method to the mix.

Not just because Memory Palaces are a great means of keeping yourself centered.  Keeping yourself in the now by paying attention to this things you want to memorize in a whole new way. A way that bleeds out into everything you do when you’re watching the world for new Memory Palaces. In this way, Memory Palaces are a healthy part of creating presence in the moment.

The other reason stems from the emphasis in the MMM is on adding relaxation to the mnemonic mix. Meditation if you can. Chilling out, not taking everything so seriously. Letting your imagination be what it wants to be without judging it.

And that message is worth climbing up trees for. It’s worth tossing Magnetic coconuts into your inbox for.

Every day.

Unprofessional?

Not really.

More like anti-professional.

Just the kind of stuff you’d expect from some dude who writes books about memory skills because he knows they can change the world.

I’m hardly the first (yes, there have been crazier!)

I definitely won’t be the last.

But until next time, I remain Magnetic.

Until next time, help someone else learn about Memory Palaces. Teaching a skill is one of the best ways to learn a skill and helping people improve their memory is one of the best ways we can make the world a better place. The more we remember, the more we can remember. And the more we learn, the more we can learn.

Sincerely,

Anthony Metivier

P.S. If you know people who might benefit from memory improvement, feel free to use this Twitter link to send them the good news about Memory Palaces and exactly how to build them.

The post Robin Williams And The Most Unusable Memory Palace In The World appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method, Scott Gosnell, the translator of two books by the mnemonist Giordano Bruno talks about the man, his writings and the application of his memory techniques to everyday life.

Since recording this interview, a lot of people have asked if they should read Giordano Bruno.

My answer:

My opinion aside, listen to Scott’s knowledge on this Magnetic Memory Method Podcast interview.

You’ll learn:

* How to use Star Wars (or any movie you’re familiar with) as a Memory Palace.

* Why Scott’s translations of Giordano Bruno are the product of perhaps the best form of procrastination you’ll ever hear about (and maybe even be inspired to do some similar procrastination of your own for the good of humanity).

* Scott’s amazing Memory Palace technique for students, possibly the most amazing technique you could add to your studies that I’ve ever heard!

* Bruno’s idea that an intelligible system exists behind the world and how this connects to memory.

* How to use memorized objects as Memory Palace locations.

* How studying Bruno’s systems could help you coordinate your knowledge while learning to retain it.

* Why Francis Yates’ interpretation of Bruno’s activities in The Art Of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition may not be the best way to think about his memory improvement projects.

*  Why Bruno was really interested in the psychology and neuroscience of the human mind – not magic.

* Why Bruno thought his memory system could give you an internal representation of the entire universe … or did he?

* Why Bruno felt it was a practical concern to keep your Memory Palace well lit and not place your associative-imagery on a background of the same color.

* How context sensitive cues can either help or harm your memory.

* Why Bruno likens Memory Palaces to writing so that you can scan a Memory Palace for memorized information the way you would scan a page looking for a particular word.

* Why Bruno’s execution probably had nothing – or at least very little – to do with his mnemonic systems.

* Thoughts on Bruno as a “marketer” of memory techniques.

* Why memory techniques were a very useful talent for a king to have (and still are even if you’re not a king).

* Why Bruno most likely wasn’t a spy – but probably would have made a good one had he been.

* Why Bruno thought that the Memory Palace was the best and most effective memory method available, even though he also used smaller methods like linking, lists and poetry.

*  … and much, much more.

Further Resources

De Umbris Idearum by Giordano Bruno, Translation and Introduction by Scott Gosnell

On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds by Giordano Bruno, Translation and Introduction by Scott Gosnell

Startup Geometry by Scott Gosnell (Forthcoming)

Scott’s De Umbris Idearum website

Scott on Twitter

Scott’s Windcastle Venture Consulting

Bottle Rocket Science

Giordano Bruno on Wikipedia

Giordano Bruno: Philosopher Heretic by Ingrid D. Rowland

Hermes Trismegistus

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Cool Documentary Featuring Animated Bruno Giordano For About 10 Minutes:

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey – Episode 1 “Standing up in the Milky Way”

Novels Featuring Bruno Giordano:

Heresy by S. J. Parris (one of many in a series of books structured around Bruno)

The Solitudes (The Aegypt Cycle) by John Crowley (also know as Aegypt)

Tony Buzan On The Paradise Of Multiple Intelligences

2018 Giordano Bruno Memory Techniques Update!

 

Miskatonic Books has released a new translation by John Michael Greer.

Please visit their store to order one of the limited editions of On the Shadows of the Ideas by Giordano Bruno.

Or if you’d just like to learn more about my initial impressions of the book, check out this replay of my recent YouTube Live Stream about On the Shadows of the Ideas by clicking play on this video:

 

The post Scott Gosnell Talks About Giordano Bruno appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Wanna Know Exactly How To Master Any Language?

 

I got good news for you. The amazing polyglot Luca Lampariello showed up in Berlin and we had a good long chat about language learning. And the best part is …

We’ve got it on video!

Take a look on YouTube or download the full MP4. You’ll find the full transcript below and can also download it as a PDF for future reference.

Anthony: Hi, this is Anthony Metivier. I’m here with Luca Lampariello, and we are doing a very special interview. We are here in Berlin. I live in Berlin but Luca is visiting.

Luca: Yes.

Anthony: We thought, “Well I’m the memory guy and he’s the language-learning guy.” We both operate in the same sort of industry so to speak, because his business is memorizing words and my business is helping you memorize them. It’s really not a business. It’s more like a passion.

Luca: Yes.

Anthony: For people who don’t know you, you’ve got dozens upon dozens of videos on YouTube that train people in a particular brand of language learning, but for people who do know you, which I think probably many, many people who are watching this already do, one thing I’ve noticed is that we have never heard much about your personal life and I mean I don’t even know if you have a ‑

Luca: You meant to pry. You want to know the real secrets.

Anthony: The real stuff, like the dirt; for one thing, I’ve never asked you if you have a middle name.

Luca: Yeah, actually my name is Luca, everybody calls me Luca, but my other name is Vittorio because my grandfather, that’s my grandfather’s name. The Italian tradition is to call a son or a daughter after your grandmother. It’s an old tradition coming from the south. I don’t know if it’s the same thing in Canada. He is actually my father’s mother. His name was Vittorio. He was a physician, a doctor who used to be in World War II unfortunately, and he was in Africa. Unfortunately, I never got to meet him. My mother told me he had very interesting stories to tell about World War II. Because one of the things I like the most, apart from language, is history.

Anthony: Did any of those stories survive that you remember from your grandmother?

Luca: Yeah, I remember a lot of things that my mother told me. Not only my grandfather actually, my other grandfather as well and my grandmother, I got to know my two grandmothers and they were telling us about what happened in World War II. One is from Calabria which is deep south. The Americans and the Allies invaded Sicily and then went up to Calabria, and my other grandmother actually comes from the north of Italy. I’ve got the whole family from everywhere in Italy. So I have all these different traditions and also dialects. One thing that I never say is that my grandmother when I was a little kid just talked to me in Calabrese dialect. I learned that as well.

Anthony: Well that’s a lot of different parts of Italy but I know you are living in Rome at the moment. Is that where you were born?

Luca: Yes, that is exactly where I was born and I’ve been living there for 34 years almost because I’m turning 34 actually in two days.

Anthony: Thirty-four in two days.

Luca: Thirty-four, I’m an old man.

Anthony: Well happy birthday in advance.

Luca: Thanks.

Anthony: But you’ve also lived in Paris?

Luca: I lived in Paris for three years. I lived in Paris and Barcelona.

Anthony: Okay so the three places. What strikes you as being some of the major similarities and major differences?

Luca: That’s a very interesting question. Barcelona is very similar to Italy – the weather, the people, the traditions. I always say that Spaniards are a little bit like our cousins in a way because I believe that the language is like part of the culture and our languages are very, very similar and that reflects a certain kind of mentality.

Paris on the other hand, the French are similar to the Italians in so many ways but at the same time they’re different. Paris is like a northern European city and the weather is kind of different. It’s a little bit chilly there, like here in Berlin.

Actually Berlin is not as cold as I thought. It’s like 6.

Anthony: Plus 6.

Luca: Plus 6 you know. So I’m kind of liking it.

A month ago I was in Russia and expected to be minus 20 and it was plus 8 and now it’s plus 6 so I might bring good weather or maybe I’m just lucky. I tend to lean towards the second. I have to say that the French and the Spaniards and the Italians are very similar in so many ways. It’s not easy to pin down these things because you have to live to understand, but basically I also believe that the language plays a huge role, and obviously history. We’re all Latin peoples so to say so there is a common trait to our culture and the way we eat food and etc.

Anthony: You mentioned history as one of your interests. What interests you about history?

Luca: Well everything interests me. The thing that interests me the most is that if you know history, I feel that if you know history you know the world you’re living in right now, because we’ve been shaped. We’re the product of history. We are the product of all the things that happened in the last 4,000 years actually, the last million years.

So what interests me the most, if you want to be more specific is World War II, because I find it, I might be a little bit maybe naive to say that, it’s really like I see it as a clash between the good and evil even if sometimes you think of it the Allies bombing German cities and so many people dying. Is that good? Does that serve a specific purpose? Was it strictly necessary? Yeah, obviously it served the purpose of defeating Nazi Germany but at the same time was it strictly necessary.

We’re not going to delve into politics but I’m very interested in like how it was possible that all that thing happened and the fact that we’re living in, I wouldn’t go so far to say that we’re living in a peaceful world, that is not true, but at least in Europe, if you think about it, that’s the longest period we have had peace, 70 years. If you think about it, Europe has been ravaged by war for centuries and there’s been a period longer than, I don’t know, never been like 70 years. We’re lucky. Canada as well. It’s been at peace for a long time. So we have to consider ourselves lucky. We take it for granted but it’s not granted at all if you consider all the wars actually right now in Syria and in many, many other places in the world.

Anthony: Absolutely. I want to ask you about some of your other interests but just not to abandon this for a second, do you think that the capacity for language learning has been involved in the peace that has developed over time not just in terms of as if anybody has any better abilities now to learn languages but the spread of language training both hardcopy things and online.

Luca: I believe so. I believe, for example, if we had a war right now it wouldn’t be the same. People are biased in so many ways. For example, the Italians tend to (not all Italians obviously) tend to think that the French are a little bit snobbish or the Germans are a little bit close minded. It’s absolutely not true.

 

Are We In The Best Period Of History For Learning A Language?

 

The fact that we live in a peaceful society right now, I’m talking about Europe obviously, has so many – for example yesterday I was at a party. There were so many people from everywhere around the world. You could talk about anything and people want to mix. There is not this, “Okay, you’re a foreigner.” No, you are part of the European community and this has revolutionized, I would go as far to say that it has revolutionized the way young people, this young generation is learning languages.

I don’t know if you ever heard about the Erasmus project. Canadians and Americans might know about it, but it’s a European thing, where a student can decide to live abroad and learn a language. It’s not just because they go study there. Obviously they go study there, but the people who went there just completely change the way they see their own country and their own existence and their own traditions, etc.

So I do believe that peace has contributed enormously to the development to this multilingual society in which we live in. This is a fantastic thing. Obviously the Internet plays a huge role as well. But I do believe that the peaceful conditions in which we live do play a huge role in the way we live and we consider the reality around us.

Anthony: Okay so we’ve got history, and we’ve got language, and it seems that they’re tightly wrapped up in one another. Do you have an interest that you would say has nothing to do with language?

Luca: Yes. Before I talk to you about my other interests, I just wanted to say that for me, when people talk to you for example talk about you and talk to you and say oh, you’re the memory guy, they’ll refer to you as the memory guy.

Maybe yourself you’ll refer to yourself too as a memory guy, but the thing is that, and when they talk to me, the first thing they want to know is how many languages I speak, and the people who already know me treat me as friends as well. We talk about a lot of things but mainly they think that my main interest is languages. Now, actually languages is one of the things that I like but it’s not just the only thing I do.

When I think about history for example, I’m very interested in World War II and specially the Eastern Front and what happened between Nazi Germany and, for example, the Russians. That helped me delve into this and actually sparked this interest in understanding how the Russians saw the war, and I’ve been reading a lot of books in Russian and a lot of books in German to understand how the two parts lived the war.

So this is just one event in the course of history but there are many other events which actually push me to read more and more in the languages. We have just spoken of the countries that were involved in the political-historical processes that I was trying to understand and read about. So history is actually contributed as other interests to perfect and improve my language skills.

And to go back to your question, as other interests that have nothing to do with languages, sports doesn’t necessarily have to do with languages unless you want to read a blog about running for example in English or in other languages. Sports is one other thing that really interests me. If I think about it now, for example, I really like movies but this has to do with languages right.

Luca: So I’m trying to find something that has nothing to do with languages, and I would say sports. I like jogging. I’ve been trying to jog. I decided to jog in 2003, I decided that I wanted to try it. Have you ever run? Have you ever tried?

Anthony: I have actually. Unfortunately, I developed arthritis in my knees so I can’t run. But I did run quite avidly as a young person.

Luca: And also football. I used to play football a lot as well as with my twin sister. Yeah, she’s a professional now. Yeah, so this is for example one of the things that I’m interested in that has I would say not – everything potentially has to do with languages because language is the way we convey our thoughts, but yeah sports is one of the things I’m interested in and that’s it.

Anthony: Well the sports thing is very interesting I think because there is a phenomenon of jogger’s high and actually I’ve interviewed you before and you mentioned the relationship between joggers high and language learning as a kind of finding the zone or finding a spot where things really start to come together and happen and you mention that also in your master class.

Luca: Absolutely.

 

Sleep, Meditation & Fitness Can Make Or Break Your Language Learning Experience

 

Anthony: What I wonder, a question that I’m thinking is, and I’m not sure exactly the best way to elaborate it, but one thing I work on is meditation and finding this clear spot without thought, without thinking and, well that’s not the best way to say it, but a place where thought is so focused and intent that it’s sort of beyond language or one word, and I’m just wondering as someone who has dealt with so many languages and found mastery in so many languages how do you get silence in your head? Is it just the running or do you have any other kinds of personal practices?

Luca: That’s a very interesting question. I’ve been thinking about mediation a lot recently. I’ve never done it, but I’ve been hearing more and more people actually trying to meditate because they have been overwhelmed by life. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by life, like myself. You were right when you said that sometimes I’ve a storm of languages or thoughts.

I think one of the most difficult things to do is actually to find a moment where you’re not listening to anything, not even to your inner voice, you’re just at peace with yourself. If find it a very difficult thing to do because we live in a world where we get stimulated continuously all the time. This is one of the things that I actually want to try because I’ve never tried it before.

I think that, going back to the running thing, you are right that when I run I think better for some reason. Maybe chemically because you’ve got a lot of chemical substances like serotonin and we release substances when you run and are more relaxed. When you go back home you take a shower and you are peace with yourself and with the world, but at the same time you still have this flux of thoughts and memories is stilled.

I don’t know if it ever happened to you that you try to sleep and you have so many things that you can’t, so many things in your head, whirlwind of things that you can’t concentrate.

So this is the next frontier, the next thing that I want to try to achieve is actually silence. It might be strange for a polyglot or a multilingual person with a lot of speaking so much because I do like speaking, but actually this is one of the things that are the New Year’s Eve resolutions.

Anthony: Well I’m working on a book right now actually called The Ultimate Sleep Remedy and I’ll hook you up with a copy after and it gets into mediation and different strategies that you may be interested in.

Luca: I have an article on my blog myself. It’s a guest post from a friend Joseph, he’s Swedish who actually gives very valuable advice as to how to sleep because some people just can’t sleep. Insomnia is one of the biggest problems. People don’t talk about it that much, but actually there’s a lot of people that can’t sleep and not being able to sleep is a terrible thing.

Anthony: You know that’s another thing that has come up when I’ve spoken to you before. You are talking about being with Richard Simcott, and he uses the story of him staying up so late at night and just being fascinated, and just not stopping. How do you, given all that you do and all that’s required of your brain power, how to do manage to do so much and also be well rested. You’re obviously a very fit and healthy guy.

Luca: Fit, I don’t know about fit.

Anthony: But I mean what’s with sleep, and your ability to retain and working memory and all these kinds of things that are required for learning a language.

Luca: I’ll give you one very simple answer. My answer would be that I manage to speak and maintain languages because I live them every day. I found the best environment for me. There are a lot of people focused on the best method, the best approach and then they focus on getting the materials, etc., but first I believe that the human factor is one of most important things.

Language has been created in order to communicate. We convey thoughts through language and if you find the best conditions, your brain and your capacities are going to thrive. So what I did is I told myself when I started speaking more than three or four languages, I told myself that the only way I could maintain so many languages at a certain level was to live them.

On the one side you can structure your day so that can for example listen to the radio when you’re washing the dishes or you can read books. But that’s time you choose to spend on the languages. But on the other side, if for example you live in a city like Berlin or Rome or Paris and you surround yourself with what I call the microenvironment with foreigners. You live with foreigners, you go out with foreigners, and you tend to speak languages all the time. Like currently for example I am living with my friend Davie. He is from London, you know him, and a Dutch girl, and that allows me to speak Dutch and English on a daily basis.

I also go out very often with a lot of friends who live in Rome, and I tend to speak other languages. I have a lot of friends everywhere. One the one hand in real life I have this microenvironment where I speak two or three languages at home plus when I go out I speak other languages with other people, with my friends, and I work with languages.

 

Why Language Learning Is More About Managing Your Time Than Words And Phrases

 

As a language coach what I do is basically I give classes in the language about language but also about a structure, how to organize your time, etc., and I do it in various languages, for example in all sorts of possible combinations. For example, Americans want to learn Spanish, Spaniards want to English, Italians want to learn English, Americans want to improve their Italian, and so on, from Russian into English, English into Russian. So I’ve got to practice a number of languages on a daily basis and one of the best ways to learn is to teach.

If you teach you learn a lot. I guess it happened to you as well. You’re trying to figure out ways to help as many people as possible and this means that you are going to do some research and you’re going to apply it to yourself. So you’re going to understand the process better. This is exactly what I’ve been doing in the last five years, trying to figure out ways to help as many people as possible, figure out their best way.

So it’s not only a psychological growth, because you have to understand people better. It’s not just understanding people better. A good language coach and even a good language teacher doesn’t necessarily have to speak the language perfectly but has to have the capacity of understanding the student’s needs and tastes, etc., being able to relate to him, and I think the psychological process, I’ve said it a number of times, is absolutely important to thrive in language learning, because without psychological aspect, you can try to nail everything but things probably will not work.

Anthony: So speaking of coaching, if I were to come to you and say, “Luca, I want a coach and I need that personal attention from an individual because nothing else is going to work.” What is the first thing that you’re going to say to me in response, assuming that we go through the mechanical stuff of transactions and filling out forms? What’s the first thing that you’ll say?

Luca: The first thing I will say is why do you want to learn this language? First I’m going to ask you about the reasons why you’re doing this and then your personal story, you’re personal history in so far as language learning is concerned, and I’m going to ask you about yourself. What do you do? What are your interests?

First of all it’s about trying to figure out who you are, what you want, why you want it and all the lessons are tailored around your tastes and needs, and I take into account what kind of person you are. For example, let me give you a very concrete example. If you are a very shy person, and you have difficulty expressing yourself some reason, the very first thing that I am going to do is focus on the things that you are good at, for example, at reading or listening and small tasks to get out of your comfort zone.

I’m not going to talk to you immediately, okay, we’re going to have this conversation in the language right now. Because it might be detrimental actually. So the very first thing that I do is to try to understand, you know language experience does count. Because I’ve noticed that the people who have never learned a language before and maybe they’re in their 50s, struggle a little bit more than people who say have learned another language.

But it’s not just about language experience. It is multiple factors that play a role and you have to try to tackle every single aspect and to try to do it from the very beginning.

 

Why Children Suck At Language Learning

 

Anthony: You mentioned people who are in their 50s, and you’ve said before and you mention in your master class that actually we often make the mistake of saying that children have some special advantage in language learning and older people are thought struggle more than children, but you kind of have an interesting take on that, and if you could say something about that kind of paradox about age and language learning.

Luca: It’s a paradox because first of all I don’t believe, this might sound absurd to a lot of people who have been claiming that the acquisition of your first language is different from the acquisition of the second language, I believe that the mechanisms and the way we learn languages as adults or kids are almost the same. There are differences in the way our brain is wired that’s true. It’s true that in a way that kid’s brain develops fast and that it’s a little bit different psychologically. They want to blend in so what they do is they tend to play with their schoolmates, etc. They develop the language in a certain way.

If you think about it, I’ve met in my life, I’ve met adults that speak a given language, a foreign language extremely well, because for example they have lived in the country for three years and they have family. Let’s suppose a French guy living in the Czech Republic. He moved there maybe 30 years ago, and he’s been speaking the language ever since, and he’s got a family, and he speaks to his kids in Czech, to his wife in Czech. He might have an accent, but he might develop the nuisances that are characteristic of a native speaker.

I lived in France for three years. I’ve learned so many things. Not just about the language, the way they talk, the way they move their mouth. These are things that I actually do. When I speak English it’s a very different thing but I digress. What I wanted to say is that basically I think that any person who speaks his native tongue well can learn any language.

Think about it, as a native speaker you can hold hundreds and hundreds of thousands of words, hundreds of thousands of combination of words and expressions and it’s amazing. I strongly believe that our capacity of learning anything is not infinite but it is huge. If you think that we have more neurons than there are stars in the sky, there are millions, I don’t know it’s a mindboggling number. So I believe that you can accomplish anything in life if you put yourself in the right circumstances, conditions, etc., your brain is literally and your capacity is really going to thrive.

People think for example that it’s exceptional that a person speaks ten languages. I would say it’s exceptional because just a few people do it, but it doesn’t mean that people can’t do it. It’s just because it’s a combination of things. I do believe that talent can play a role. It can facilitate the process, but I also believe because I’ve seen it firsthand that, I’m talking about language learning but this goes for everything, you can do amazing things or supposedly amazing things that look amazing but actually they are within our brain’s capacity.

 

You Don’t Have To Be Talented To Learn Another Language

 

Anthony: Talk a little bit about talent. I mean we did some magic tricks the other night, and I just want to bring that up because you were saying teach me a trick. Some people show me tricks. They never want to teach me trick. That’s true. There are certain things that I can do with cards that you can do too and there is nothing particularly talented about them it’s just putting in the time and analyzing where the hands need to be and analyzing the audience and doing this and doing that and saying this at a particular moment and not another moment. But I think the number one challenge is actually sitting down and doing it.

But if there were more, what are some of the talents that you think that you have in particular that have gotten you this kind of success that another person could look at himself or herself and say I am lacking in that area and then they could actually build a talent.

Because we’re talking about age and all that stuff, we know that neuroplasticity is a reality and the brain can change and certain activities that we engage in can cause new neural networks to form and that sort of stuff. What do you think that you have in particular that others may not that they could then work towards getting in order to put some stuff in their toolbox?

Luca: You ask very interesting questions. Thinking about language, language is a huge field actually. I would say that the thing that I have developed which may differentiate me from other people might be phonetics. It might be the way I pronounce languages. But I don’t really know whether I have a talent for that or I have a knack for sounds.

I would say that I believe, I strongly believe that the reason why I pronounce certain languages well or supposedly well, that’s what people tell me, is that I train. I train not just sitting down and thinking okay now I’m going to train. I train in every possible situation. Think about it, I don’t know if you ever talk to yourself. That might sound a little bit crazy but everybody does. Once in a lifetime they’ve done it.

Anthony: I’m talking to myself right now. No I’m listening to you very attentively.

 

Use This Butt-Naked Fluency Secret First Thing Every Morning

 

Luca: What I do for example instead of sitting down and thinking okay I’m going to deliberately spend some time doing this activity, I just train while I take a shower or while I go walking. Once I was even in the metro, and I really felt like speaking. I couldn’t talk to anybody. I just couldn’t come up and say, “Hey, hi, how are you doing?” But start a conversation like in the metro would have been a little bit weird unless I had a specific purpose, right?

So I just got my phone out of my pocket and I just started talking as if I were having a conversation with my girlfriend. I was calling this imaginary girlfriend and talking with her in Dutch because I wanted to practice Dutch. So I was imagining and literally taking pauses as if I were listening to this person talking to me and I was replying. So I was imagining this conversation for the purpose of training. I was calling her. I remember that I was imagining in my mind imagining her sitting with her friends and talking about stuff. What are you doing? Where are you going? What are you going to do tonight? All sorts of things.

This helped me actually articulate the sounds. I don’t remember how many facial muscles we have but you have to train your facial muscles as well as your mouth, etc., because it’s like sports. When you start jogging, the very first time you go jogging you are like breathless and you tell yourself who made me do this. You’re cursing yourself for going to the park, but actually it becomes easier. It is the same thing for languages.

When we speak languages we tend to step out of our comfort zone so far as sounds are concerned because we have to utter sounds that are completely different. Sometimes they are very, very different and difficult to pronounce at the beginning but if you do it consistently it gets easier and easier in a matter of two, three or four months and the way to go about this is not just – you can do some work at home sitting down but what counts is that you find a purpose. You tell yourself I want to communicate certain idea to somebody even if it’s an imaginary girlfriend that you are talking to on the phone in the metro and you just talk.

People tend to consider, this has been my experience, tend to think and tend to focus too much on the small details instead of taking a look at the bigger picture. Imagine that you are taking a look at a picture and somebody tells you, you start looking at this picture and you focus on the small things instead of figuring out the message the picture wants to convey.

What I do is, in very specific terms, don’t focus on the pronunciation of the single words but try to utter a sentence. If you want to practice one word say it within a sentence. This is called a top-down approach. Because if you start with bottom-up approach, what happens is you start with pronouncing single words, then might pronounce a word correctly or very well, but when you have to chain sounds one after the other in a sentence, then it gets a little bit difficult. But if you start from the very beginning with short sentences then it gets better and better.

 

How To Enter The Mazes Of Phrases And Get Out Alive And Fluent

 

For example, let’s suppose an Italian wants to practice the word church because it is difficult for us to say church. So instead of telling him to try to say church, church, church, for ten times, just try to say I want to go to the church. You would practice it a number of times, and then maybe you can make your sentence longer and try to say I want to go to a church because I want to meet some people because I love God, etc., etc. So you start with a short sentence and then you make it longer so that if you think about it you’re practicing the pronunciation of ten words instead of just one at a time. It makes a huge difference in the long run.

Anthony: So what do you do with someone who says but I can’t memorize, I can’t even get myself to memorize or pronounce “I want to go.”

Luca: What I tell them is that don’t think about the fact that you can’t memorize, just do it. Meaning, what I would say, the meaning of the thing that I would say is that remember that you speak your first language. Why do you speak your first language, we talked about in another podcast that languages are just networks. What I would suggest and this is my approach, maybe yours is different in memorizing words, but what I do is I always tell them that if they build the network like a spiderweb then the flies, which are the words, are going to get stuck automatically in the long run.

One concrete example, this doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily super easy, when it comes to languages for example that are very different like Russian, Russian is a Slavic language so a lot of words have Slavic roots and they are difficult to remember. But when you start delving into the language you’re just recognizing the small clues that are inside words. Once you memorize that it becomes so much easier to memorize words. Because some words even contain other words.

So when you start at the beginning, you might struggle a little bit but if you expose yourself, and you still consider the language always as an effort when you read, when you listen, when you talk, etc., things become easier and easier.

For example if you have to remember the word РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ, it’s difficult to pronounce. You can focus on the sound. You can focus on РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ, which means common, but instead of just thinking wow this is like a long word. I’m not going to remember. You might remember it now because you are going to commit it to your short-term memory, but then you have to actually remember it maybe in a couple of days and then in a conversation it’s going to get a little bit complicated.

So my suggestion is even when you have words like that, break them down into shorter pieces. For example РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ, you can divide into РАС-ПРОС-ТРА-НЕННЫЙ and then if you break it down, this is a technique called back chain, you repeat this word a number of times and then your brain will actually figure out the elements.

One other example, German is very famous for putting words – you can see these words are huge because they are made of four or five words. But actually if you spot the words or a pair it becomes much easier. They put an “s” to put these words together sometimes. So, everything boils down to how you see things.

If you see this word and you tell yourself this is too difficult, you’re already lost, you’ve lost the battle. But if you tell yourself, hmm, let me look at this word actually. Take two seconds to look at the word and tell yourself actually this word is not so difficult because look at this. This is like spot the “s” in the case of German and you will see that the “s” separates two elements, and then you will see these two elements and maybe if you know one you just have to remember the other one.

 

Why You Need To Use All Of Your Senses (And Your Muscles)

 

And I always suggest this is probably how I figured out my memory works. My memory works visually meaning that I can – actually when I’m fairly advanced in a language I can memorize words also just by listening to them, but normally I strongly believe that if you want to commit any piece of information to your long-term memory, what you should do is you should try to use all the senses. Well not all of them but like sight, so you have to see the word. Then you have to listen to it and then you have to pronounce it so you’re using your mouth, your using your ears and then you’re using your eyes and the more you do that, instead of just listening, some people advocate that you just listen and it’s great, but then if you don’t have a base, being able to see the word might help.

So I just put all these elements together and then I don’t sing in the shower, I just talk. Some people sing in the shower, I just talk for example and even in the car. I don’t know if you ever noticed it, some courses just give advice and they say, you know, maybe when you’re driving the car just talk to yourself. The person next to you and think you’re totally crazy but maybe you’re just talking on the phone. A person talking to themselves the first thing you’re going to see is you’re going to try to spot a microphone or try to spot a telephone to help them see maybe they’re not crazy. They’re just talking to somebody. And it turns out to be true like 95% of the time. Depending on where you go.

Anthony: That’s hopeful anyway that they’re doing something like that and not talking to themselves. But let me think here, so I’m not going to try and do the tongue rolls but РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ ‑

Luca: РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ

Anthony: Yeah okay. So, break that down a little bit. When you are learning that, that means common right?

Luca: Yes.

Anthony: And so, just the process that you, just quickly, you encounter that word. How did you encounter it and/or in what context and then what do you do next, and what do you next and what’s going on?

Luca: Very good. What I do is just, if you want to memorize that word, I think that you not only understand and this is the first process, you first decipher it. You break it down.

You then get a text, not a list of words. So you just have to grab a text and it should be interesting to you. I believe that one of the reasons why a lot people fail learning languages is school and not only at school because they tend to be exposed to text or materials which stops and they’re not interested in. If you’re interested in something, you know, thing about five things you like. Then you just go and look. The Internet allows you to search for any sort of material. Then you just get exposed to it, preferably with an audio.

Then what I do is, I try to listen. I try to read at the same time and what I do, for example, I stumble upon a word like РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ, first I break it down into parts. The very first phase is to decipher and understand the text because you can’t learn something you don’t understand. If you understand you’ve got a higher chance of retaining the information.

Then what I do, I might have delved into this because this is very specific, but what I do is to use a system, a space-time repetition system. A space-time repetition can work/cannot work. I know that for some people it doesn’t work, but it depends on how they do it. They have to personalize this process as well. If you hear that the best technique is to have a space-time repetition system in which you have to repeat a word every single day or every two days, it doesn’t work.

 

Possibly Each And Every One Of Us Learns In A Different Way

 

Every brain is different. Possibly, each and every one of us learns in a different way. So you have to find the best way that adapts to the way you’re learning and committing information into long-term memory.

Mine was to build a system where I found out the best intervals of time in which I’m not just repeating stuff but I’m using that word or attacking that piece of information from different angles. One day I read it, one day you listen to it and one day I use it.

The other piece of advice that I’ll give is use this thing. Languages have been created to be used. If you can use these things you’re telling your brain that this or that piece of information is important, and the brain is going to retain it. So this is kind of important.

So I’ve structured, I’ve built a system in which I tend to first of all put myself in the best conditions to understand something, and then to use it basically. Then to review it in a certain way and then finally to start using it. Obviously there are some words like РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ which is a common word in Russian but there are like very uncommon words that you might not use in your lifetime. The reason why we know it as native speakers is because for some reason we’ve been exposed to them, or when you read. But how many times are going to use words like “grate” in English. I don’t know. It depends right.

 

Why Word Choices Are Personal, Context-Specific And Based On Practical Use

 

Anthony: I use it all the time.

Luca: Well you use it all the time but the point is that everybody is different. So some people and this I think this has not been tackled anywhere, my way of dealing with words has to do with – I believe that we have this core of words that that everybody uses because they’re absolutely necessary. You can’t avoid using these words. Some words might not carry a lot of information like “and, the, on,” etc. These are common words. But there are other words that depend on the specific field of your work, of your life, etc.

Maybe somebody working in the lumberjack business, for example, might know some specific words that have to do with wood or their specific work. Screwdriver for example, somebody working the specific field. Some other people will never use that word. Screwdriver is another common word but if you think about rate, if you think about things that are very specific, once I saw in forum a person say if you don’t know these words it means – I remember it was hot flashes. I didn’t even know it at the time when I saw it, hot flashes, first I’m not a woman.

Anthony: Well you can get andropause if you’re a man.

Luca: I can get andropause, that’s true. But I didn’t know this word and I found it a little bit shocking that some people really believe that fluency has to do with – it does have to do with the amount of words you know up to a certain level because you have to know a lot of words in order to speak fluently, but for some people advocating that if you don’t know like ten words that are almost never used or it’s going to be very unlikely that you’re going to hear it, then you don’t know the language.

If you think about it, even in your native English and my native Italian, we don’t know a lot of words. We know actually a tiny fraction of the words that exist and our vocabulary is huge. There’s hundreds of thousands of words. English has, I don’t know how many words, a million words? It depends. Obviously some people want to know all the words but in most of the times you don’t need to know all the words but you need to know who to use a tiny fraction of the words that you have to use in order to communicate.

So my idea is what a person should do is to learn how to put them together, syntax, how to structure a sentence and then you can learn all the words that you want. So to me it’s first build the structure, and then add the content, the meat.

Anthony: Well we’re talking about words and words and one of the things that I always get asked about is what do you do if a word has more meanings than one. So for instance grate which you were mentioning can also be to grate, to make something small, like grated cheese. So how do you contend with that?

Luca: Interesting question.

Anthony: Because many, many words have that quality of meaning more than one thing and the technical term for that, speaking of the million words in English is polysemy, the polysemy of words, the poly – the many-ness of the semantics.

Luca: Which is another aspect that is quite important. Well I would say the easiest way to tackle this is to get exposed to language as much as possible because with multiple contexts you’re going to see that these words are used in a different way in languages such as Chinese, for example, they don’t have many sounds and very often a sound, I’m not even talking about a word, a certain sound can mean not only different words but can be a verb, can be an adverb at the same time, to be a noun depending on where you find it. So you have to, if you want to tackle this, you better tackle it immediately and you have to tackle it with a certain mentality and tell yourself, when you look up a word, don’t just restrict yourself to thinking okay this word has just one meaning but go and actually look at dictionaries, like online dictionaries such a word reference has this but many dictionaries offer that. Try to see the possible meanings or the possible uses of that word.

Okay this word РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ means common, got it. No, try to see it in two or three sentences where this РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ could mean different things. I’m not talking about РАСПРОСТРАНЕННЫЙ but another word. In English you use some words it can be a pronoun or can be a verb or can be an adjective depending on where you find it. In Italian it is the same thing. There are some special cases like in Chinese in which this is particularly important.

 

Language Is Almost Like DNA

 

But the idea, it all boils down to the way the mentality with which you approach a problem. If you think that there is just a simple correspondence between one word and the other words in language and that one word has just one meaning then you’re missing out on the bigger picture. I wouldn’t go so far to say that it’s detrimental but it can slow you down because you have to see a language, once again I know that I insist on this, as a network. Like DNA almost. So a certain piece in a certain position has to be linked to other pieces around it in a certain spot. It’s different in another spot.

Anthony: So given this kind of need to see things in a network sort of sensibility, what do you think is the number one thing that people do that prevents them from entering that network, to becoming a part of it and keeps them outside rather than in the field so to speak.

Luca: There are a number of things that can keep you from figuring that out. First is to consider words as isolated elements of the language and the other thing is that I think it is actually important is they don’t use the language. They might think okay I just am studying this language and using books but they’re not using it.

So my piece of advice, especially in languages that are similar to your native tongue, is to start using the language and make it meaningful to you. One of the best ways is to get to know people. Nowadays even if you live in Alaska or Australia or some places like in a small island near New Zealand you can still find people on the Internet or people you can talk to, and you better find people you want to talk to. If you find a person or stumble upon a person you don’t want to talk to or people have the same interests or whatever, what counts is that you’re starting to use the language and the language becomes meaningful to you and all doors open because your brain is going to absorb the information in a much easier way.

If a language is confined within the realm of just books or things that are not even interesting to you, you’re going to struggle. You will see that the moment you start using the language, and using the language mind you doesn’t necessarily mean speaking the language, you could even just type or you can listen. There’s a number of ways you can translate. You can do a number of things to make it meaningful to you that don’t necessarily imply speaking. Speaking would be the best option because by speaking you reinforce certain mechanisms and your brain learns how to use the language like live with people and emotions are involved and it facilitates the process.

But you can do a number of things once again without necessarily speaking if you are a shy person or simply if you don’t feel like speaking to somebody.

Anthony: One thing I’ve always wanted to ask you, I’ve actually thought about it before, it came up after our second interview, and I just thought wow why didn’t I ask this. Having to do with language coaching and so forth, I wonder if I were an actor, like I was going to be in a new movie with Tom Cruise and I had a pretty big part and I needed to speak Russian, and I don’t want to learn Russian. I just want to be able to look like I can say 12 lines of text perfect, dead on and everything like as if it is just exactly my mother tongue. What would you do in that case and or would you even touch such a case as a language coach?

 

Like An Actor, You Need To Understand Why You Say Things In A Certain Way

 

Luca: Yeah, why not. Anything is feasible. What I would do first of all is to teach them how the language works, the basic intonation patterns. It’s a very interesting thing that if you think about it every language has basic intonation patterns that can be reproduced, it can be easily spotted if you do a certain training and this is a training I’ve been doing for a number of years in five to six languages, and instead of just telling them you have this text learn it by heart, I would tell them first of all try to understand why you say things in a certain way.

Let me give you an example. If you are an Italian native speaker and you want to learn, for example, a sentence in English, you have to understand why certain things are said in a certain way.

If you say, “I want to go to church because I like it.” Instead of telling this Italian guy, okay just listen to this and say, “I want to go to church because I like it.” Think about it. You say you have two sound units. So as you attach all the words together the first thing that you say is “I want to go to church” and then you raise the frequency, you know the vocal cords vibrate. They have like a certain fundamental frequency and you go up, and I will tell them, the reason why you go up here and you say “I want to go to church” ‑ you can say it in a number of ways obviously, but the reason why you raise your tone is because you’re about to say something else.

If you think about it we constantly raise and lower our tone to convey meaning and to let the other person understand what we’re about to say. Every time we raise our tone in certain spots within the sentence, we are actually telling the other person that either we have finished delivering one piece of information, or we’re about to say something else. All the sentences that have a secondary clause, something like “I want to go to church but,” “I want to go to church and,” “I want to go to church although,” and I have this pattern. You build and you actually train people.

The first thing is I would train people in basic patterns. I would say every time you say a sentence, you should probably start with short sentences, you have a point where you have to lower you tone because it’s a statement. Any statement, any possibly statement unless it’s a question, has to end somewhere. So you see the end just by seeing it written. But the end in terms of sound is simply when you lower your tone on a certain syllable within a word which is very often the last word but not necessarily and that means that you have finished. That means that I have finished, fi-nished and all the rest is low.

So every single sentence you have to see every single sentence as a message. So if somebody who wants to be a good actor, the very first thing is what is it that you’re trying to communicate. The thing that you’re trying to communicate is a message and if you have that message and there are small mini messages inside the message as well. So instead of telling, once again, you have to repeat this by heart, which could be difficult. If you understand something it is going to be much easier.

 

Break It Down

 

You first break it down into smaller chunks. You first explain. Then you explain to them why the chunks are pronounced in a certain way. You focus on the chunks and you put them all together. This is basically how training works and it works very well if you know how exactly. They commit it to long-term memory because they understood it. You can tell, even if an actor is very good, you can tell that if they speak the language or they don’t speak the language.

For example I suspect that you might know the guy. I don’t remember his name, memory fails me, but there’s a very famous movie by, I don’t remember his name either, but wait, I’m going to do this like I’m going to try remember Tarantino, Quentin Tarantino, Inglorious Basterds, and you can tell, I don’t know if you’ve seen it?

Anthony: Yes.

Luca: And there’s this guy that speaks a number of languages. He is a fantastic actor.

Anthony: Christoph Waltz

Luca: Yes, you’re the memory guy, you surely have a better memory than I do. For example, I have a problem with names. I don’t remember names. Not because I don’t remember them, it’s just because maybe I’m not interested. Well this is another thing.

Anthony: I can help you with that.

Luca: You’re going help me with that. So fixed. Deal. So we have Christoph Waltz who speak a number of languages very well, like he recites very well but I could tell, I suspect, I don’t know, I’ve never looked it up, maybe we can do it later, that he speaks French because his French is natural. He does not look like, oh of course it’s not perfect, he sounds foreign, but his French is so natural in the way he talks that I suspect that he knows French well. English the same thing. Italian instead he just recited a couple of lines but you can tell it’s a little bit stiff. So even if he’s a very good actor you can tell obviously its normal. It’s not his native tongue. I don’t think it’s that easy to pronounce language perfectly, but I still believe that there are certain things that can facilitate the process.

If he had probably understood like how Italian intonation works, and he put some more possibly, you know a lot of people don’t think that it’s necessarily important that he speaks like a native. It adds a flavor to it if you speak as if you have a foreign accent.

But in that case I think that for some actors if they want to recite 12 sentences in a language I would spend some time training, four or five days in making them understand why things are the way they are, and then things are going to be much easier and provide a visual aide, visual guidelines.

People talk about they can see the notes when they play the music, musicians. You can do the same thing for language. You can literally find a system which is consistent. In phonetic books there are all sorts of systems that can be used, visual systems but every system is different depending on the author but what they have in common is that they are consistent. These are the things like for raising tone you use something like this. You’re going up with an arrow or you’re going down, etc. Other people do other things. What counts is that if you have a visual guideline, actually it’s going to be very, very helpful for your memory because you are understanding things, you’re breaking things down, and you’re going to repeat and produce something that you have not understood that has a meaningful message.

Anthony: We have been talking about acting now, and we talked about magic earlier, and there’s an old saying that says that a magician is really just an actor playing the part of a magician, and I wonder to what extent you think that that might apply to language learning.

Luca: It applies a lot because the moment I’m talking to you now for example in American English I feel a different person. So you have to be an actor in a way. Obviously it’s difficult to be an actor all the time, because an actor is just reciting. But I would say in the big show of life, if you are consistent, you’re telling your brain that when you speak the language you have a certain way of moving and talking to people, etc., and if your brain absorbs it, then it actually becomes easier to be phonetically consistent and to speak in a certain way.

 

Language Is In The Hands

 

Now if we talk about sounds, because language is mainly sounds that you would produce, but it’s also in the way use hands. For example the way I’m using my hands right now, I would not use them in the same way as if I were speaking Italian. I would go more like crazier, I don’t know. But the way I use my eyes, my nose, my tongue, my hands, my body is different and whenever I speak the language the amazing thing that happens is that, I suspect and I’m not a neuroscientist, but I believe that the reason why I speak in a certain way is the product and the result of the experiences I lived through that specific language.

In English sometimes I see things, I see specific sentences and specific situations that I’ve seen actors use, heard actors use in certain movies for example. So movies and the characters who are in the movies played a role as well as the people I met in real life and they all contribute to my personality, or I wouldn’t go so far as to say personality but a side of my personality, because I don’t believe that speaking a language changes my personality but actually it shows another side of the personality that I have when I speak another language. So a person potentially can express all the facets of her or his personality if he spoke a number of languages, and I do believe that’s exactly what happens when you speak a language, and the better you speak a language the more evident this becomes.

Like in English I hope I speak English easily. I have this, this thing, this is very evident. Like I feel a different person. I’m not a different person but I feel different because I’ve lived the language, and I have a parallel life. I have my Italian life but I also have my life I live through Engligh which makes a huge difference. It’s because of the experiences that I lived.

Anthony: Your English is excellent.

Luca: Thanks.

Anthony: But it’s interesting what you mention about gestures because I don’t think I’ve done this nearly as much as I have since living in Germany because as a Canadian we just don’t do that that much. I’m not sure what the alternative is in Canada. I wonder, as you’ve traveled around living in these different countries, do you ever feel that you have become less Italian?

Luca: Yeah, well that’s a yes and no. That’s a difficult question to tackle. I believe that I have, I’m still Italian, but I wouldn’t say that speaking other languages made me less Italian but it made me richer, it made me more. It didn’t make me less Italian. It made me more international. So I’m Italian but I’m more international.

What I would say is that it made me understand, it made me see Italy and Italians and myself in a bigger framework so I understand why we say certain things, why we think certain things, and other people think certain things. It made me understand my own country better. It made me more conscious of the person I am living in this world but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it made me less Italian though.

 

Can Living Abroad And Learning A Language Destroy Your Cultural Identity? 

 

Anthony: It’s kind of a weird way to phrase the question. I was just thinking of a friend of mine who told me that when I first moved New York he said, “Oh, three months from now you won’t be Canadian anymore.” It will be impossible because the country the flowing. It’s in its own zone so to speak and once you’re out then you re-enter. It’s like you can’t step in the same river twice kind of philosophy. I just thought, come on man, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’m Canadian and I’m going to be Canadian for the rest of my life but eight years later, I go back to Canada and I have no conception of where, I don’t recognize the place anymore and I don’t recognize myself inside of it. It’s what they call reverse culture shock. I kind of did not mean to say that less Italian, that was a weird way of phrasing it, but that kind of thing of can you reenter and have it.

Luca: That’s a different ‑

Anthony: You know what I’m trying to get at?

Luca: Yeah, absolutely. Well the thing that happened after living three years in Paris is that I became a little bit more, I don’t want to use the word intolerant, but there are certain things that I cannot stand anymore that I took for granted. For example waiting for the bus for 45 minutes without anybody telling you, maybe under pouring the rain, without anybody telling you why that is happening is very irritating. In France if something like that happens, people are going to start the second revolution, the French revolution.

So there are certain things that I found difficult to accept after living in a country which is, let’s face it, more efficient, and on the one hand I appreciate some things more because every country has problems and every country has good and bad things. Italians I believe they are a wonderful people but there are some things that could be changed if we, and I include myself, put some energy and some will into. There’s just no will to change things because Italians say we got this far and who cares.

So in a way, once again, I’m not less Italian, I’m just more conscious of the things that could be better, things that other people might not be conscious of because they’ve been living in that environment for their whole life. So they don’t know that actually things can be different, it can be better and that’s it. I think it made me a richer person and because I see and I think I can see a problem or a reality from different perspectives. There’s not one bad thing I could say when somebody tells me, this is quite common actually, oh yeah, you are just good if you speak English. You have been living in Germany for eight years right, if I remember correctly.

Anthony: Well I’ve been out of Canada for that long.

Luca: Yeah, for a certain amount of time, would you think that your experience would be same if you didn’t speak a word of German?

Anthony: Uh, I don’t know because I do speak, I speak lots of German.

Luca: But at the beginning would you think that if you didn’t speak a word of German you wouldn’t be able to talk to certain people and people might speak English to you but they might not be as warm and trustworthy and all sorts of things if you didn’t speak their language. There’s like this English bubble. People can live here obviously, people can understand you, you can order things, you don’t need words, you just need your finger to just point at things. But speaking the language gives you the experience and the thing you experience are completely different.

Anthony: Yeah, that’s actually an interesting question, and you probably have this experience as well. Being a second language speaker or third language speaker, you’re always speaking in context. There’s always a frame, a framework around what you’re doing. So there’s something called Amtsdeutsch in German which is the kind of German that you use in public offices.

So when I go to the Ausländerbehörde which is the immigration office, there is a special kind of German there that is used and if you’re Canadian then that special kind of German that you might be struggling through is treated differently than if you are from a poor impoverished country that these people struggle to get in.

So there’s that kind of issue that goes on in language learning and then there’s the kind of German that you hear at a doner stand or where you get grilled chickens and there’s just all kinds of different Germans. There is not one German language and so I wonder what you think about that. That’s another piece of the puzzle of language learning. We treat it as if we are learning a language but each language is languages in and of itself.

Luca: Yeah, I agree. There are all sorts of languages within a language because in ever context you can learn to express yourself in a certain way or you have to use certain words and there is registers. You would not talk to your friend, you know you’re having a beer in a bar, and you would not talk to him or her in the way you would talk when you go to an office or when you have to go to university and you have to talk to your professor, you have to talk to your friends and family, etc. So there are all sorts of things you have to understand.

 

Why People Are The Most Important Part Of Learning A Language

 

It’s about cultural consciousness and this is particularly important when it comes to the languages like Japanese. In Japanese there are these registers and I believe in Korean it’s even worse. The situation is even worse. People actually get angry at you unless they understand you are like a foreigner because you’re just talking to your professor as you would say, “Hey buddy, how you doing? What’s up?” Image you walk up to your professor and you say, “Hey buddy, what’s up?” Your teacher is going to take a look at you and say he’s crazy. I’m not going to talk to this guy or you are going to fail and flunk the exam. Which is a more likely possibility. So it’s absolutely correct that you have to learn that the language you find in a book might not be the language you actually get to hear every day.

Actually that’s the reason why people are so important. When you watch a movie and you watch it with foreigner, I’m sorry, when you watch it with a native speaker, it’s so enriching because you might not understand a word or that person and that happened to me quite a lot of times and say you know, this is a common situation. This is this the thing that people say in that situation. This is a very common sentence because everybody knows this movie. So they are helping you understand not only, it’s called pragmatics, how you’re supposed to use the language.

They read a book by Oscar Wilde and then I go around and talk like the book, like Oscar Wilde, people obviously would say you’re talking like the book. You’re still communicating but talking like the book is not like talking in normal life. So, this also is kind of important because I think that one of the mistakes, the very common mistakes is that people tend to focus on things that are not strictly necessary.

If first you understand your goal, if you actually realize that your goal is one of communicating with people, it’s one thing. If you want to understand and read literature, like ancient literature in a given language that’s another goal completely. So if your goal is to talk to people, just start talking to people and you’re going to understand and you’re going to realize very quickly what kind of language is being used. Well the book is something else or you can do both.

A native speaker normally does both because most native speakers have a certain path. They live within a family, they go to school, they go to university, so they understand all these sorts of things by living the language, but a person who is an adult or like a second language learner and who learns a language in a certain way might actually end up learning just one piece of the language and not understanding that actually there are a lot of facets, there is a lot of aspects to a language they are not aware of and they should be aware of if their goal is to speak like a native speaker or speak a language fluently and blend in.

Anthony: Speaking of speaking like a native speaker, you’ve got a new course out which is a master class. Can you tell us a little bit about that and the benefits involved in being a student of that course.

Luca: I have been learning, I’ve been teaching, I’ve been training I would say, I would use the word training a lot of students in the last five years but still I’m just one person. So I can help people. I saw how beneficial this can be for people if you just show them the way.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this thing that a great teacher is the one who shows you the way but doesn’t tell you what to see. What I mean is I try to show them the way and but I couldn’t help the one-to-one conversation or one-to-one class. So I have in the last five years I’ve had so many requests from people, and I can’t possibly work with everybody because it’s impossible.

So I told myself the best way to do this is to create a course that people can actually watch and they can take, extract information, valuable information, and I basically tackle what I consider the most important things for a language learner to make somebody independent and to figure out for example, the things that we’ve been talking about, to figure out how to decipher intonation, pronunciation with a very special approach. This is one thing.

Another thing is how to tackle a conversation because I believe that holding a conversation is a kind of art, and how you can develop your language skills very, very fast by knowing how to use Skype. Skype is just an instrument but if you know how to use it, it becomes very powerful.

Obviously also the memory thing, how to use your memory efficiently because one of, I think, the biggest struggle is to remember words. People want to remember a lot of words. They’re like the bricks of the language, they don’t know how. I believe that the reason why a lot of people can’t is not because they can’t because they speak their own native tongue. To speak thousands of words is possible. They just don’t know how to do it. If you know how to do it things are much, much, much easier. I told myself, I figured this out. I want to give this to people because I think that it can be very, very beneficial.

I’ve been seeing governments spend thousands and thousands of Euro and like you go to school for five years and you can’t string a word together. Why is that? There must be a reason. The reason is that their people are not trained to learn languages. They are taught the language. I don’t believe that you can teach a language. You can lead a horse to water. You can’t make him drink. So what I think every school should do or every institution is show, train people to learn and then you show them the direction. You’re not just telling me, going back to what I was saying before, if you tell them what to see, for example grammar patterns, they’re not going to nail them. They have to understand how to tackle grammar patterns and they’re going to do them themselves.

If you try to teach them, so I put this comprehensive course together tackling what I believe the most important things and especially focusing on training people and the last thing is for example time management. I believe that time management is absolutely important. People don’t know how to manage their time. People, me included sometimes, I told myself I don’t have time for this. It’s not that you don’t have time. Every day you have to find the time to do something you like. So it’s not about having time. It’s about finding the time and if you start, you will revolutionize your world and every time you tell yourself you don’t have time. Instead of telling yourself I don’t have the time you say I did not find the time then the next day you might find the time. You know what, I do have the time actually.

 

Learn A Language By Doing Something You Like Every Day

 

It’s just every day you do something you like. Every day you do find the time to listen to music, to take a walk or whatever. So you can do exactly the same thing for language and in only 30 minutes a day or 15, 15 minutes is nothing if you thing about it, 15 minutes a day you can accomplish a lot. I explain, for example, how to use your time effectively in all sorts of situations even when you’re waiting for the bus. It’s all these things together and a lot of people actually watch that master class. I’m very happy about it.

Anthony: Yeah, I’ve taken it myself actually and even as I guess I would say an intermediate language learner, I wouldn’t say I’m advanced in that sense, but certainly advanced in the memorization field that goes along with language learning, but I learned a great deal because and I’ve been on both sides of the coin, learning in a language class and learning in a self-taught context and the idea and the structural – basically it’s not really a system but there’s a systematic element to what you’re teaching where you can help yourself come up with your own system is very well described and expressed and just some of the diagrammatic elements that are laid out for you are really fantastic and I learned a lot and benefited a great deal.

Also, I don’t want embarrass you or anything, but you’re a great teacher. It’s interesting to listen to, it’s fast paced and there is useful things that you can take away if you keep notes and revisit the course more than once because you’re not going to get it all in the first time, and I think above all there is the most important thing which is the inspiration to take action that you get from going through this and seeing it from a master the actual procedure that he’s used himself. It’s not theory handed down by the government that goes into a classroom from a teacher who is getting paid almost nothing to handle a bunch of students who don’t want to be there in the first place. This is someone who loves language learning. Who has demonstrated beyond the call of duty by helping so many people on YouTube and so forth that this is real, and this is a methodology that works no matter who you are or where you are or what your situation is.

So I have benefited from it a great deal and am very grateful that I had the opportunity to do so.

Luca: Thanks, I’m glad you have appreciated it.

Anthony: Absolutely, and the website where people can get a free introduction to the course with a number of videos, maybe you can share that.

Luca: Yes, it’s called Master Any Language.

Anthony: All right Master and Language and we’re going to have that on the screen as well and I highly recommend you go and get these free videos and really one of the most amazing things I thought is your introduction on that page you’re speaking multiple languages and with subtitles so you can really see for yourself just how rapidly Luca can switch between these languages and read the message in subtitles if you don’t know those languages and it’s one of the best paths that you’re going to find in the world that will get you to learning those languages or even just one language.

 

Can You Learn More Than One Language At A Time?

 

I guess my last question would be for you, one that I get a lot, is it possible or is it recommendable or is it realistic to learn more than one language at the same time.

Luca: Absolutely yes. If you know how to do it, it all boils down to if you know how to do it and you know how to manage your time you can do it.

I’ve been learning two languages at the same time since 2008 and there are some guidelines even and I elaborate on my blog talking about how people can learn two or three languages at the same time. My suggestion is to learn two languages at the same time. Three might be a little bit too much unless you’re a very experienced language learner. But it is absolutely feasible. I see no reason why you could not do that.

But once again, it’s not just about a matter of learning two languages at the same time but you have to try to find a system where you can maintain the other languages that you are learning because one of the things that I heard very often is that, for example, if an American learns Spanish, goes to Spain and he spent three years in Spain, speaks Spanish quite well, then he moves to Italy and starts speaking just Italian then there is going to be a conflict and every time, for example, I’ve heard this a number of times, the person says, “Oh, now I speak good Italian but I’ve forgotten everything about my Spanish.” The reason why that happened is because you just stopped speaking Spanish. But if you go to Italy and while learning Italian you find a partner and you tend to practice Spanish, then you’re going to speak both languages well.

When it comes to learning two languages at the same time, remember to structure your time so that you can learn these two languages but you have to maintain the others. This is exactly what I’ve been doing in the last 20 years. I told myself I’m going to learn a new language every two years but while I was adding languages I made sure that I kept reinforcing and maintaining the languages I already knew. Sometimes even using some languages I had already learned to learn others.

It’s true up to a certain point that the more languages you learn the faster and easier it gets if for example the language that you’re learning is similar to one of the languages you already learned. If a language is completely different from any language you’ve ever learned, you’re going to struggle at the beginning a little bit because it’s completely different. But, obviously the more languages you learn the higher the chance that the language you want to learn is going to be similar to one of the languages that you have under your belt.

To answer your question, it’s absolutely feasible to learn two languages. There are no limits. The only limits you have are the limits that you have in your mind. But if you can break the barrier, anything is possible. The reason why a lot of people think it’s not possible is just few people have accomplished supposedly amazing things because they took action.

Anthony: Well speaking of taking action, what are you working on now? What’s your next step?

Luca: Insofar as language learning is concerned, my next step and we were just talking about that is Hungarian. The language is completely different from anything I’ve ever learned. I’m going to learn, I’m learning Japanese right now. It’s a really big commitment and my next language is going to be Hungarian and I want to put together other courses which are going to be more specific and I really have a passion for this. I really believe that to show the way is the best way. If you can show the way, you can consider a couple of texts and you show them, for example, how the intonation in Spanish works, that they can tackle any text. This is one of the things that I would really like to do.

One of the projects is to start tackling specific languages for specific learners because I do believe that everything depends, everything is relevant as Einstein used to say and if you’re a native English speaker, learning Spanish is going to be different that if you were an Italian speaker. So you have to also consider the relative systems. I see language as a system. So if you have a certain system you have to consider that in order to learn how another system works.

One of the first things that I do with my students is to show them how, if they speak the language I speak, how their language works phonetically to understand how the other language works, the new language they want to learn and this is very, very important because if they’re conscious of the way their language works, it’s going to make things so much easier.

Anthony: Well this has been very inspiring and very helpful, filled with lots and lots of valuable information, and I really want to thank you for meeting with here in Berlin.

Luca: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Anthony: So we will talk again soon and for everybody out there that URL again is http://master-any-language.com/ so go and check that out and avail yourself of the free videos that Luca has for you and we’ll talk again very, very, soon.

 

Further Resources

Luca Lampariello on Language as a Net

Luca Lampariello on Working Memory And The Oceans Of Language

A Magnetic Little Tip On Memorizing Foreign Language Vocabulary

Kerstin Hammes Talks About The Real Meanings Of Fluency

Olly Richards Talks About Language Tech And Communication

The post Luca Lampariello On How To Master Any Language appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, you’ll learn how to find more Memory Palaces, even if you live in a small town and …

… don’t want to appear creepy to the locals.

You can use the Method of Loci anywhere for language acquisition, and yet, what if you don’t have access to a big city? What if you live in the boondocks? What if you’re a prisoner and haven’t seen daylight for a hundred thousand hours?

Well, I haven’t got answers for all of these questions, but as I talk about in this episode, often the questions are more important anyway.

Why?

Because questions open up the mind. Questions trigger the search for solutions. Throw experimentation into the mix and the next thing you know, life changes. And usually for the better.

That’s why I especially admired this recent letter I received from a member of the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. Give it a read as a supplement to this week’s episode, followed by a basic prose version of my answer. As always get in touch if you have any questions. I’d love to help you if I can.

The Magnetic Questions Of The Week

I’m going to apologize in advance, this email is going to be a bit long, and…I am very sorry for that. I would be, however, very grateful for your help.

I have to say this… I watched a lot of your videos, listened to a lot of podcasts, and…I honestly am pumped to get started really seriously learning Japanese vocabulary.

However…

At the risk or sounding like I’m obfuscating things…I just have a few quick and simple questions, involving the “Art of Association” itself, so to speak.

Should one prefer memory palaces, or images?

If you have looked at Japanese before, you probably have noticed that its spelling is in no way similar to western languages, so I came up with two possible ways to memorize vocabulary, but, I’d rather do things the right way, the easier and more efficient way, right from the get-go. So, in idea one, I thought of treating each kana as a sentinel, to give each one a specific image that will be tied to vocabulary. I’d create 26 memory palaces, a-z, and store words based on their first letter when transliterated. Then tie the actual first kana image, to the rest of the word. That way I can have words like yasai and yokoshiro in the same palace, with distinct “sentinel” images attached to them, to give away the first kana itself. This idea uses less palaces, but more images. And is, as I think of it, “Palace-Conservative”.

The second idea, (Don’t worry,there is only two), is “Image-Conservative”, and, the general idea, is to use a single palace for each kana. Now, there are variations to this, really, in variation 1, I only looked at the hiragana, (because katakana uses the same sounds but different symbols), and would store words based solely on the first kana in the word. (no transliteration). Including the Datuken, I would require 70 palaces. If I included “Combo-Hiragana”, I’d require 106. (Roughly). To blow this up even more, in variation 2, if I were to treat the katakana and hiragana separately, to remember the proper spelling of words (Like, which kana syllabary to use), I’d need roughly 212 palaces.

I’m brand new to memory palaces, and the magnetic memory method, and really, the “Palace Conservative” idea sounds more intuitive to me, but, haha, this is coming from a guy who thought rote learning and spaced repetition systems like Anki were the only way to go. And I really, really didn’t like them.

Memory Palace Acquisition, a problem?

For me, yes. Let me explain: I’m 21 years old. I live in a town of 5000 people. Nearest town has maybe 500 people. Nearest city, of 250,000, is 400km away. I have no car. I have no drivers license. I also have a night job, and sleep during the day. I have spent 13 years of my life here, about 8 years of my life in that small nearby town, and 4 months in Barrie. I don’t remember those 4 months very well, I was only 7, and…well, I was extremely depressed, and in short, that’s the reason I ended up back in this town to begin with.

Anyways…during the Palace Recitation exercise I was only able to come up with about 60 palaces. And I really thought about this,  with a lot of time and effort. Occasionally, 1 more might pop up, but…I believe I have pretty much maxed out now. And I really don’t want to sound pessimistic, I love this method thus far, and I can see myself using it forever, and ever…and ever. But, until I’m able to move out to a city, where I can actually just “go memory palace hunting” so to speak, I’m stumped about what to do. I don’t know if you ever lived in a small town before, but just going out and getting new friends and doing all that, is really…it’s very hard to do. For example I can’t just, you know, burst into the little high school we have and start socializing with a bunch of the kids there. It’d be…inappropriate, to say the least.

I played one of my favourite video games, Ocarina of Time, as remade for the 3DS back in 2011, and spent about an hour, really visualizing and exploring one of the “Dungeons” in the game, both as a visualization exercise, and because I may use it as an imagined memory palace. I was thinking of using many, many more buildings I have found in video games as well, but…recalling these structures adds a layer of complexity on top of storing the images…so, I wanted to know how “practical” it would be, in general, to save up a bunch of imagined memory palaces?

What about large imagined memory palaces?

Okay, so, recalling large, real buildings, is fairly easy. Our brains are tuned for that. But what about…large, imaginary buildings? I know it sounds like a no-brainer, like, “it’s imagined and it’s large and so there’s more to try and remember about the layout, so of course it’ll be harder to remember!” But, I was wondering if it’d be more practical to memorize a large imaginary palace, (Take Ocarina of Time’s Shadow Temple or Spirit Temple for example), versus, trying to memorize the layouts of say, ten or fifteen small or medium sized imaginary buildings? I suppose it depends on the volume of related information I’d want to store in it, but…if I wanted to learn about multi-threaded programming, and store it all in imagined palaces, should I store all the info across several imagined palaces, or contain it in a single, large one?

Not crossing your path, and long hallways…

On the note of not crossing your own path in memory palaces. During my “Virtual tour” of the “Shadow Temple” in ocarina of time, I realized there are many hallways and, “leaf” rooms. Or, really, a hallway that leads to a room, and that room leads to 5 more connected rooms, but the only way to get back, is to go down that hallway again. Does that…count as crossing my path? Or does it only really count, if there are stations in that hallway?

Okay I’m done bombarding you with questions for now! I hope you can answer, and…I hope they are good questions (Well, there’s no such thing as a bad question, really) but, I hope they are at least…entertaining questions or…something positive. I love you videos, your method, your website, (I also love that it is mobile-friendly), and your podcasts. I listen to them while I’m at work!

Prose Version Of My Answer

Thanks for your questions!

First off, I apologize for the lateness in my response. I was on a research trip in Italy so that I can bring more valuable ideas to the Masterclass and Mastermind. Do you know of Giordano Bruno? He had some great memory systems and I’ve been able to look at some archival documents and will be putting together something special over the coming year based on his work.

But I also fell ill and should have seen a doctor while I was there. So I am on a lot of antiobiotics now and haven’t really been able to get to the computer until yesterday and am struggling to catch up. I had seen your email and apologize for not answering it, but I was shivering in bed with fever and all manner of nastiness and really could only do the minimum. I haven’t even had a podcast up for almost three weeks and though I’ve been blessed by having lots of emails asking if I’m okay, I feel terrible about getting behind. This is my biggest passion in life and it sucks to get ill. Maybe one day I’ll have an assistant who can at least send out an email that I have to be away. But hopefully I won’t get this sick again, and no matter where I might be in the world, I will make sure to see a doctor one way or the other.

All that said, I’ll do my best to address your questions with respect to using Memory Palaces for language acquisition and we can carry forward from there if you have any more. I really appreciate them and am dedicated to helping you in every possible.
It’s great to hear that you’re excited for learning Japanese. And I like what you’re thinking.

The honest answer is that you should try both. At first glance, I think your sentinel idea is going to work better, but I still think the only way to know is to at least give a percentage of the 212 Memory Palace version you are thinking of a try.

Why?

Because it might open the floodgates in your mind in a way that will never happen if you opt for just the one. I’m going through the same experimentation phase with Kanji and I simply have to do the extra steps of trying different approaches I come up with or risk never knowing what will

a) Work best
b) Stimulate new ideas and results I could not anticipate without at least giving it a try

There’s a third way, however, and one that I don’t think you should take because you’re obviously advanced enough not to need it. And that’s to either use Romanji or the principle of homophonic transliteration to create your own Romanji. Ultimately, this can create more problems than it solves and I only recommend it to people who need to get their foot in the door in order to at least have speech recognition and the ability to speak, but since you want to read, spell and have such a high order of thinking already working for you, go with these two options and settle on the one you like best. You’ll figure it out in short order.

With respect to life north of Barrie, Ontario, I lived in Toronto for 10 years, so know your neck of the woods quite well. I’ve driven through at least 5 times throughout my life. I’ve also lived in places smaller than you, though admittedly Silver Creek is within 20 minutes of Salmon Arm by car. Of course, I had to hitchhike a lot to get there, but it was still not that big of a deal and I did wind up walking more than a few times too.

In other words, I think I understand your situation and have to say that 60 is an impressive number given the circumstances. But I think you can probably stretch it out further.

About using the school you mentioned, often schools have evening programs and public events. It’s Christmas time, so maybe you can go to the Christmas concert or take a one-day seminar. There’s probably a community events calendar available online that you can look into.

Failing that, you could just go to the principal’s office during the day, tell him about the Magnetic Memory Method and say that you need a new Memory Palace. Tell him that you know it sounds creepy, but if you could make an appointment a 4 or 4:30 after you’ve woken up and all the students are gone home to have a guided tour, that would be great. If you’re upfront with people, they’re usually very helpful, no matter how strange your story may be.

Have you tried the local hospital? You should be able to walk around in there without anybody even asking about your presence and get lots and lots of stations.

I don’t know if you’re a religious person or not, but there are often tasty snacks after the Sunday service and churches make for great Memory Palaces. I have several.

Have you covered the gas stations and restaurants? Admittedly, these aren’t the greatest, but a gas station with a restaurant can work wonders just by sitting for a cup of coffee.

Finally, when I used to walk those long stretches, I encountered many barns and I can still remember them. Even without seeing the inside of them, I know that they all have four corners and have used these corners to memorize information.

About virtual Memory Palaces, I really don’t find them practical for most things for the precise reason you’ve expressed: they add a layer of complexity. More than that, you have to rebuild them while you’re staging and decoding the associative-imagery. It makes no sense in most cases.

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experiment with it. You most certainly should. I’ve had some interesting successes with them, especially with memorizing poetry and other verbatim texts. This is because the text itself serves as a kind of aid to memory because it’s a chain. So one thing you can do is practice Virtual Memory Palaces based on video games using poetry first and then adapt them for other purposes such as vocabulary.

This represents an extra step, but I think you’ll find that it pays off in the long run. You get good with using Virtual Memory Palaces with something relatively trivial first and that lends itself to the practice and then switch the ability you’ve gained over to something more difficult. It’s kind of like how a baseball player practices swinging with 3 or 4 bats in hand so that they have more power and agility when they gear down to just one bat during the game.

About crossing your own path, the solution here is to not enter the rooms. Just glance into them. I call this at certain points in the Masterclass the “Peer vs. Enter” technique. And it literally is just that: peering in through the door and casting your mental eyes around either clockwise or counterclockwise depending on the nature of your journey and then moving on. It helps a lot of people a great deal.

The other alternative is not to travel your Memory Palace at all. You don’t have to be a figure that moves along the journey. You can be like a god who lifts up the roof and then peers down at the layout, looking from room to room and station to station. There will be path-crossing issues with this too, but it is another way to think about travelling through a Memory Palace.

Back to Virtual Memory Palaces – I do have a full video about this that I haven’t uploaded to the Masterclass yet. It goes through some of the more advanced techniques and will give you some ideas. Please extend me some patience with getting it in there. There are other videos coming too that I know you’re going to love.

And to thank you for your questions, I’m going to feature them on the podcast. With any luck, I’ll be able to get that out today. I’m really glad that you enjoy it and hope that you won’t mind that I make your letter and this response the basis for an episode. But I think it would be of tremendous value to people and maybe I’ll get some more ideas as I’m talking through the material.

You’ve also given me some ideas of illustrations that I can make to better demonstrate the Peer vs. Enter technique. As you know, using a Memory Palace with these optimized methods is one of the best memory care home solutions we’ve got, so I’ll work on these and make them exclusive to the Masterclass.

I hope that these notes answer your questions. Please do be in touch if you have any more and let me know when that something special I put into the mailbox for you the other day arrives.
Talk soon!

Sincerely,

Anthony

P.S. Visiting this dude nearly killed me. LOL!

Further Resources Mentioned In This Episode

Previous episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast: A Magnetic Little Tip On Memorizing Foreign Language Vocabulary.

Giordano Bruno on Wikipedia

Interview with Scott Gosnell about Bruno’s memory techniques

Scott Gosnell’s translation of Bruno’s De Umbris Idearum: On The Shadows Of Ideas.

Difference and Repetition by Gilles Deleuze

What is an Author? by Michel Foucault

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