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‘Learning Chinese is really difficult,’ she said to me. ‘I worked solid for two years, and even then only had the basics. And, there’s no way a person can learn Chinese faster than that.’
I was at a seminar in Hong Kong, and the young woman really meant it. She had learnt to speak Mandarin Chinese and, quite clearly, it had been a difficult process for her. But it didn’t have to be that way. It certainly didn’t match my own experience, or that of the many other people who have learned a new language easily and effectively.
I told her that I thought Chinese can be mastered very quickly by a Westerner — in just a few months, actually. She replied that this was not possible, and looked at me like I was slightly mad.
Rather than get into an argument with her, I decided to write this book.
This book is about you, and the things that you can do to learn a new language faster and more easily than you ever thought possible. It’s also about me, because it follows the journey that I have taken to learn what many consider, in the West, quite difficult languages — Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese. The lessons about how to learn a language apply equally to languages that could be considered easier.
In the pages that follow I will share the personal strategies and techniques that have worked for me, and other successful language learners that I have talked to.
I’m writing this book for one simple reason — I want you to discover how to better use your natural language talent more effectively. After all, you’re a language genius anyway — you have to be if you mastered your mother tongue! Remember, you came into the world with no words and no grammar. You had nothing to hook on to and, somehow, you still became fluent.
If you are reading this book you probably want to learn a new language. Maybe you are about to go to a new country to live or work. Possibly you are already there. Maybe you have decided that, for work or some other reason, you need to master another language even if you are staying at home. Or maybe you are just interested in learning a new language. Whatever your reason, I’m sure you want to know how to do it with the greatest ease and the most fun.
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