The bloke concerned is, I will warn you, a rather self-satisfied and bumptious person, but we'll have to get past that.
Anyway, worth 15 of your minutes I reckon. And here's a bit of a challenge for you ... I agreed pretty well with 3 of his ideas, I thought one of them was plain stupid, and the other one I was pretty neutral about ....see if you can figure out which was which!
Second thing ... I wonder about how many actual words he uses accurately in these languages he speaks. The amazing language expert David Crystal admits he is no linguist.... and that anywhere near to native-speaker status is an impossible dream for the majority of learners .... and why? Well, grammar can be taken on board over time, but the enormous number of words needed to hold your own with a native speaker is bloody enormous! Even in our own first language which we have been learning every second of our lives, we are still learning new words, new expressions.
So which one of his hints did I think was preposterous? Well, it was the one about side-stepping the alphabet. I've got a really crap but funny book called "Norwegian in 3 months" which laboriously writes out all the conversations and sentences lahk thiss, sawt ov clomssilly rittun owt funnetikli too mayk itt eezee-ur. Eye heyt itt!
And he uses a Spanish word for one of his reasons for doing this silly thing! Spanish! The most reliably pronouncable language in the world, once you've spent half an hour learning what to do. Russian? The alphabet is one of the easiest things about it! I love it!
All this stuff about learning buddies is all very well, but how do-able is it? Maybe for you "young" people it is!
I think his most important idea is the first one .... the willingness to make mistakes. Mind you, that's true of just about everything in life.
So .... music time ... this is absolutely beautiful .. it's Nena Daconte doing a live version of Cuando Mueren las Malditas Golondrinas..... the finest song you'll hear for a long while folks ....the other bloke is Joan Tena .... he co-wrote it ... this was the first Spanish song that I learned all the words to!
pero sin embargo siempre vuelvo a comenzar
Después de cualquier frase bonita al oido
como cualquier aspirante desconocido,
me pongo a llorar..
Inesperada sensación la de estar sola
con tanta gente alrededor
Lo de antes, Lo de siempre, Lo de ahora
todo junto me hace delirar
A borrachera diaria se me olvida.
ESTRIBILLO
Cuando mueren las malditas golondrinas
ya no vuelven nunca a la ciudad
Los montones de momentos que pase
contigo a solas ya no volverán. (x2)
si no entiendes que en la vida necesitas
también aprender a ganar
Me dijo un caballero inglés perdido en
Buenos Aires que ahora vive en Madrid
Yo le dije al invierno que en otoño
a algunas de ellas ya las vi pasar
Desnuda por la calle en primavera
ya no hay flores que plantar.
ESTRIBILLO
Cuando mueren las malditas golondrinas
ya no vuelven nunca a la ciudad
Los montones de momentos que pase
contigo a solas ya no volverán.
Como un potro desbocado e indigente
que no ha estado y sin aire ya
alargando hasta el máximo cada suspiro
en las subidas de felicidad.