Can You Master a New Language by Just Listening?

Drawbacks of Learning through Listening: When It Works and When It Doesn’t

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Recently, one of my group members, after reading my articles about “how How I Learned to Speak Four Foreign Languages in Less Than a Yearign languages in one year,” asked me some questions:

1. Can adults learn a new language solely through listening? is it a good practice?
2. can one learn vocabulary purely by listening?

So, I’ll answer these questions from my personal experience, and it might be a bit different than what you thought.

Prerequisite and Foundation:

A base language

A base language serves as a foundation or reference for learning a new language. It’s often one’s mother tongue, but not necessarily. It can be any language you’ve learned and mastered very well, close to a native level.

For example, when I was learning European languages such as Spanish, French, or Portuguese, I used English as my base language because of their similarities. Using Chinese as a base language wouldn’t have been practical in this case.

Adults and infants are different

All my articles target an audience of adults who already speak one language fairly well and have passed the age where they can learn languages as infants do, solely through immersion.

The purpose of learning a language

The only reason to learn the language here is to communicate effectively, especially for dating, while minimizing the time, effort, and money spent.

My Approach to Learning European Languages:

1/ Glimpse the Sound System:

• You should be able to mimic the pronunciation, including vowels and consonants, to a level of distinguishing different sounds, but there’s no need to be perfect in each sound.

For example, you should know that “L” and “R” have different sounds in Spanish, even if you have difficulty with the “R” sound, making them sound the same. As long as you’re aware they should be different, that’s enough.

• When it comes to learning European languages, they typically use Latin or Cyrillic letters. In most cases, the sounds are very similar, with a few exceptions, like the ‘R’ in Spanish, German, or French.

Try your best to mimic the sound, but don’t be discouraged if you can’t make it perfect right away. I have met tons of Germans pronouncing ‘R’ as in hochdeutsch instead of ‘R’ in Spanish. It’s okay.

• Also, don’t bother too much to memorize the names of each letter; you can use English names of letters as a reference. Like ‘Y’ has different names in different languages, who damn cares!

For Instance:

Based on my experience, if you’re learning German/Modern English/Spanish/Portuguese/French and you already have one of them as a base language, you can pretty much skip this part. But if you’re using a completely different language as your base, like Japanese or Chinese, you must go through this process.

2/ Skim What’s different:

• Learn new concepts, such as grammar rules or unfamiliar phenomena that differ significantly from your base language. For example, consider the concept of “cases” in German for Chinese speakers or the phenomenon of “tones” in Mandarin for European learners.
• This process becomes simpler if the new language shares similarities with your base language because you can simply copy or guess it out.
• You don’t need to master these new concepts perfectly, but it’s essential to acknowledge their existence. Only by doing so can you gradually become proficient and accurate in using them.
• Failing to recognize these new concepts means missing out on opportunities for improvement. You’d end up relying solely on rote memorization, which demands more time, effort, and resources.

For instance, in German, there are three genders with four variations each. Making occasional mistakes when using certain nouns is acceptable. However, entirely disregarding these rules and giving up is not acceptable.

Similarly, when learning Chinese, mastering the challenge of its four tones may take time. It’s acceptable not to get it right immediately, as long as you acknowledge your room for improvement. However, it’s NOT acceptable to disregard this aspect entirely and refuse to learn it.

Knowing grammar and knowing the terminology of grammar are different; the latter is for professors and linguists.

For Instance:

Based on my experience, if you’re learning Modern English/Spanish/Portuguese/French and you already have one of them as a basic language, you can pretty much skip this part.

But if you’re using one of those languages as your base and learning German, then you must invest time in understanding the significant grammar differences in German, like cases and verb position changes, etc. This also explains why mastering fluent German usually takes about 50% more time than those aforementioned languages.

Fun fact: Although English is classified under the Germanic language family, modern English is closer to Latin-based languages like French, both in grammar and vocabulary. Of course, Middle English is another story.

If you’re using a completely different language as your base, like Japanese or Chinese, you must go through this process.

3/ Learning by Listening:

Listening is undeniably the most critical skill in language learning. This approach involves passive input.

Now, after completing the preparation mentioned earlier, you can begin listening to basic words and phrases, aiming to learn them by imitating pronunciations. While pronunciation is essential, it’s acceptable if you don’t immediately perfect every sound.

For instance, it took me a month to master the ‘R’ sound in French, but during that time, I continued learning vocabulary, grammar, and other aspects of the language.

4/ Talk about What Interests You:

This approach is about active output

Learn to speak by discussing topics that genuinely interest you. When encountering a difficult word or expression, take the time to rephrase it or look it up in a dictionary for more explanations.

By following this approach, you’ll find that these once-difficult words gradually become a natural part of your active vocabulary.

5/ Listening More

As you have built a certain foundation, focus more on listening. Learn more vocabulary through listening and let it become part of your passive vocabulary.

At this stage, you can go out and talk with people in this language and even go on dates with girls who speak only this language.

From this point on, that language becomes yours, and learning it becomes really fun.

Repeat Steps 3 to 5

Now, let’s address my friend’s question

1/ Can one learn a language purely by listening?

The answer is simple — it depends. It depends on how similar the language you’re learning is to your base language.

If you come from a Portuguese background, you can easily learn Spanish, French, Italian, or modern English and vice versa. However, this method won’t work for languages like Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, or even German.

I personally learned Portuguese without using any books, applications, or courses; I relied solely on Google Translate. Why? Because it’s so similar to Modern English/Spanish, and yes, I learned it through listening alone, which was sufficient. That’s why it only took me two weeks to learn Spanish and one month for French — they share enough similarities with Modern English.

However, when I learned English as my first foreign language, I couldn’t rely solely on listening. Because back then I only knew Chinese and I was already 15 years old.

2/ Can one learn vocabulary by listening?

The answer is yes, at least for passive vocabulary, which, in my opinion, is the most crucial for effective communication.

While we can control what we say and how we say it, we can’t predict or determine what other people will say.

But to learn active vocabulary more effectively, you need to output, either be speaking or writing.