“You’ll never guess how I learned English,” said my new Slovenian friend, before describing the same method I’d heard used by at least a hundred other language learners.
“From the TV show, Friends!”
I’m a linguist who has studied language acquisition, in various capacities, for over a decade. I’ve tried dozens of strategies myself, to learn languages from Korean to Venetian to Nicaraguan Sign Language.
But this strategy continues to stand out to me, not just for its peculiarity, but also its effectiveness.