An afternoon with Benny

For nearly a decade Benny Lewis, or Benny the Irish Polyglot as many of us know of him, has been on the move. He has traveled to over 20 countries, always with the same inspirational goal: to prove that anyone can learn a language. At the beginning of January, this "technomad", armed with Anki, Pleco, ChinesePod and a Kindle full of grammar guides, arrived in Taipei, Taiwan to begin his current mission: reaching a C1 level of oral and listening proficiency in Mandarin Chinese in just three short months.

Benny's Mandarin mission has invaded Taiwan!

Being proficient in Mandarin after three months? This seemed like an almost impossible goal, until I took the time to set up an interview and asking Benny to explain himself and his mission. Benny assured me that this isn't nearly as impossible as it sounds, but, as a rather humble and modest guy, he was also quick to admit that he might not reach his goal. "I'm aiming to fail," he said, while sipping some fresh mango juice. "People think failure is not an option… it actually is," he continued. By getting rid of the perfectionist attitude you begin to realize that aiming for a goal like C1 proficiency will force Benny to push himself as hard as he can for three months, rather than setting a modest goal that he might achieve in two.

Benny hates when people say that his websites "claims" fluency in three months. For him, the idea is about aiming to be fluent in three months. After nearly a decade of language learning and traveling he is well aware that the best way for him to improve is to set a target, set a deadline, and make it public. There is no doubt that Benny succeeds in all three. He certainly thinks there is "a value in impatience," which goes hand in hand with his maxim: "speak from day one!"

"Speaking from day one" means understanding what elements of language you need "right now," says Benny. Understand them or not, that doesn't mean everything goes off without a hitch. He admits that spending time early on recognizing characters from books like Heisig's just wasn't working for him. "The context was worthless to me," he continued to explain. "Learning verbs for example, is low priority in terms of reading, because when I'm reading I need to read menu items, I need to read signs and these are more noun-based." He hasn't given up on characters altogether, making fine use of Pleco's OCR feature and a single flashcard deck devoted to characters, but he is saving a lot of the reading practice for later on in the challenge.

Benny instead is focusing more on pinyin and units of words that he can use right away when interacting with people. And while he got off to a rough start, he is back and focused on the triage system, and acquiring the information he needs to survive. Studying in a coffee shop with an Anki deck wasn't allowing him to reach his goal of "making at least 100 mistakes a day." But these days that shouldn't be a problem. When he isn't hitting the gym with a personal trainer who speaks to him mostly in Chinese, he is getting his butt kicked in other ways. He has two language teachers and other language meetups that are pushing him past his goal of speaking at least three hours of Chinese every single day.

It's clear from talking to Benny he is all about making language as social as possible, so even with his current language teachers, his lessons are far from traditional. As he said, "What I'm focusing on in is to be able to have friends." Rather than talk about grammar patterns or the one-child policy, he is learning how to talk about his work, hobbies, musical interests etc.  In a way Benny is focused on "creating the environment," as he put it, or finding new ways to expand short exchanges into conversations. Using language teachers as facilitators, he's able to dive into the things that he wants to learn.

For Benny, getting started learning Mandarin has been taking a little longer that some of the other languages he's encountered. But "not because its got tones or a different writing system, or that it's not the same as French," he said. Rather, the problem lies in the social learning strategy that has worked so well for many other languages, basically he is finding that the Taiwanese are not nearly as approachable as say a lot of cultures in South America. As a solo traveler you're very likely to get ignored in Taiwan, unless you actively seek out help or advice from others. Randomly getting invited out to a party or even a dinner among friends just doesn't happen as often.

Benny on week one trying to master the basics (photo taken from his website)

However, once Benny started to get the basics down, this social and cultural element has been getting easier and easier. These days he has tons of social events that are keeping him busy, and allowing him to learn the language through communication. For a guy who is making his living as a full-time language hacker, you'd never guess that from him "languages are (just) a means to an end." But I guess it makes sense, since, as he said, "I do not like learning languages, I like speaking languages."

To follow the rest of Benny's adventure in Taiwan and tons of other countries please check out his website Fluent in 3 Months. Since my interview with Benny ran about two hours, I'll be doing a part two to this article focused on a few tips and tricks that Benny talked about, so stay tuned!

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