Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Emil Krebs

King of the Hyperpolyglots by Michael Erard

LOL Sounds like my husband, But that aside, how did he learn?

"Werner Otto Von Hentig, a young German attaché in China, described how Krebs had jumped up in the middle of breakfast to find out from two strangers what language, “foreign to him, had been battering his ear.” Armenian, he discovered. After ordering books, he spent two weeks on the grammar, three on old Armenian, and four on the spoken language. “Then he was a master of them, too,” Hentig wrote."

How can one learn a language so quickly?

"Emil Krebs Institute" worked over 50 years to find that out and to create a method to learn languages as quickly. They say "We usually don't use all of knowledge which we learn. Studies show that average language user knows only 10% of all the words in the language and use only 500 of them.". 
- Krebs Method

Which means that language learners waste resources memorizing words that they probably won't use much if at all, and study grammar they don't need to in order to know the language, understand it and use it.
I mean, I read books before I even knew the word "grammar". I read Lord of the Rings before I had learned what is a substantive or a verb. When my mother was challenged by my father to improve her education, she got good grades from her writing, while she didn't do well in grammar, simply because she loved (and still do) reading and read a lot. You learn to use the language by using it, as simple as that.

Now, "Krebs method" is... well... not Krebs' method. Apparently it's a way of selling stuff using a famous name and utopistic promises... Basically all we know about Krebs REAL method is
"Krebs reviewed his languages in strict rotation: assigning Turkish to Monday, Chinese to Tuesday, Greek to Wednesday, and so on. With a book in hand, he walked around and around the dining room table from midnight to four in the morning, naked, smoking a cigar, drunk on German beer. His library was organized by language and language group. For each book he wrote a summary, which he regularly reviewed. At his desk, he stood. He refused to eat anything but meat, and sought out social interaction only if he could use one of his languages."

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