Now that the most basic requirements for the creation of a language have been established, it is time to return to the basic question: How to language? And more importantly, what have these previous pages even achieved? The elements of this basic language explain what fundamental components a language truly needs as grammar in terms of rules. Tourists may easily communicate with locals using this framework at the cost of sounding like a moron, assuming they train their ears to comprehend speech well. To go beyond mere make do behaviour(and you should to avoid adopting bad and ungrammatical habits), further development must be carried upon this base language to match the forms of your target language, and identify the areas where complexities, whether necessary or unnecessary have arisen. As such, depending on the nature of your target language, it will present different challenges. Each of the base categories will first be expanded into more detail based on the grammar of the target language. Some of these are frequent: conjunctions, verb conjugations, figures of speech, articles and a plethora of other things. Doing this will allow you to efficiently learn all the surrounding grammar rules which may or may not be simple, and help you realise a critical thing: The soul of the target language. Every language has an individuality, which cannot be translated word to word to another with a different personality. This personality is hidden in its core grammar, pronunciation and the way words are formed. Understanding this will help you automatically link things you don’t even know need to be linked. This is a phase where as you learn all the different grammar rules of the new language, you must make an important decision frequently: must I learn this rule or leave it up to pattern recognition? A simple rule takes care of this: if the concept has a logical base, learn the rule then look for patterns. If there is little or no logical base, let pattern recognition work its magic alone. Incorporating this systematic base of rules that govern a language and make it understandable will help you grasp things much faster than relying solely on input. Let us take the example of English in order to understand what this means. Firstly, English has scarce unique letter-sound clusters, making it phonetically inconsistent and a consequent hellscape for new learners. It is a tragedy that it eventually became a world language. The best way to proceed is to leave these exceptions to pattern recognition after learning the basic associations. Conjunctions to join sentences have specific rules behind each one. Verb conjugations have certain set patterns, yet many exceptions. Blend both methods again, since this language uses syntax rather than विभक्ति for solving the multiple subject problem. Each language has the same essential structure, and it helps to use this for the learning process. Many readers might still not be convinced. Why this entire text to find out such an obvious result? It’s quite obvious that blending both methods was the way to go, no? Yes, but to what extent should they be blended is not always as obvious? Most language courses involve basic phrases along with some grammatical rules, and I believe that this doesn’t really introduce you to the language, it merely teaches how to use it and survive. The real introduction to any language may only be acquired when one meets its soul, understands its inner workings and thereby becomes able to guess how unknown words might work together. For example, guessing the genders of words or whether a verb conjugates regularly or is an exception, and what kind of exceptional conjugation might it have. Turns out, there is a pattern in almost everything, since the same brains that love patterns have been responsible for creating all these languages. It is not possible to translate languages into each other word for word, but it is possible to say everything in every language. On undertaking such a detailed analysis of your target language, it then becomes possible to switch between languages easily, since your internal workings change the nature of your thought process to adopt the soul of that language. This will not only reduce the chances of mixing them, especially for multilinguals, but also allow you to reach fluency earlier and concretely. The only hitch then would be the vocabulary which… will always remain a matter of time. There’s no way around it. So the most general answer to the original question of how to learn a language is this: Do NOT rush. Incorrect fundamentals are fatal. Learn the alphabets and form the proper letter-sound clusters. If it’s difficult to remember, write the character while pronouncing it for days until you can remember at least 80% of the characters. Look into the 6 features of the base language so derived in this book, and find out how your target language has dealt with those problems. This gives you its basic structure. Once you have the basic structure, start expanding upon it by studying grammar from the beginning to the end(what is considered fluency or C2 as per the CEFR) to fill in all possible structural gaps between our basic language and the target. Now, you should have the entire introduction of the ‘soul’. Make विभक्ति, verb conjugation tables etc. in whatever way suits you for quick reference. Add vocabulary: Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs and Nouns. Pronouns, prepositions and some other components will be required earlier, hence are not mentioned in this step. Keep revising the structure while adding vocabulary, using input based pattern learning: Podcasts, News articles, Books etc. Let pattern recognition work its magic over the course of however long it takes until you can summon sentences as naturally as breathing. At this stage, some years have probably passed, but the target language should no longer be foreign. It would be unsurprising if you speak with a fluency like or greater than your mother tongue. And that’s it. Using this method of deep analysis also means that you will be that much more unlikely to forget it easily. Now that you have another language under your belt, you are now free to travel to and grab the opportunities of that place, and all content related to the language is now open to you. You may also choose to shock natives by speaking their language with greater fluency than them but… maybe that’s just me.