Expert Interview With Benny Lewis on How to Learn a Language Quickly

We are very excited that MosaLingua’s Samuel had the chance to interview Benny Lewis. Benny is a famous language expert, polyglot and globetrotter from Ireland that has spent the last ten years  on a mission in order to prove that anyone can learn a language quickly. The interview was recorded in Berlin (in English & French with subtitles in English).

In This Interview You’ll Discover:

– Benny’s fascinating story (how he became a polyglot)
– When you must start to speak a language
– Benny winning approach to learn any language in 3 months
– How to overcome the fear of speaking
– And much more…

You can find Benny at www.fluentin3months.com (his blog).

And don’t  miss our FREE KIT to get started with languages using this link.
P.S. The video is an extract of a long interview (we selected the most interesting parts for our YouTube Subscribers).

Watch the Video Here:

If You’d Rather Read the Interview Script, You Can do So Below:

Samuel: Ok… Hi Benny, I’m so glad to have you and to talk with you. Since you are here and I really want to have a.. to talk about how did you start with languages and traveling and so… yeah.

Benny: Yeah yeah, so I was an engineer in university and then when I graduated at the age of 21, I only spoke English. And I moved to Spain. I lived there for 6 months and I did not learn any Spanish. So moving to the country did not solve the problem for me. But I tried different learning approaches. And most important of all, I tried to start speaking Spanish, because that is the biggest problem people have is they study study study and they think if I study enough then I’ll just magically speak the language but it doesn’t work like that. It’s like riding a bike. You have to get on it, start practicing it’ll be wobbly, but you’ll make progress.And that’s what I learnt and so over the years, I’ve done this with many other languages. And I started a blog to share my stories and my YouTube channel. And yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing in a nutshell.

Samuel: Yeah, you inspired so may people to learn languages. But what can you say about people when they’re afraid to speak for the first time and they just postpone like to speak because “Oh I need to review more flashcards or I don’t know. I need to learn more before..I’m not ready… I don’t feel ready…”

Benny: Well, one problem a lot of language learners have is perfectionism. So they feel like you can’t speak the language until you speak it perfectly. And they think “if I make a mistake people will laugh at me” and er… “insult me” or something. But I feel, if you’re an absolute beginner, you should think it in a different way. Try to make your goal to make hundreds of mistakes. So if you accept from the beginning “I’m gonna speak this language,and I’m gonna speak it with mistakes”. The mistakes are not the problem, the purpose is “can the other person understand you”. That’s what make a world of difference. So if I was learning French and I wanted to say “I’m going to the supermarket”, but I don’t know how to conjugate the verb and I don’t know all this, it’s OK to say “Je aller..à… le supermarché” and it’s not perfect.But it’s understandable. It’s about communication and that’s what people need to work on

Samuel: People, they never judge you, no ? Not to speak perfectly the language.

Benny: Exactly, and when you start the language, then you get these mistakes out of your system and later you can speak it correctly.

Samuel: Hmm, OK. Maybe if you want, we can speak a little bit in French. So, “Je me demandais combien de langue tu parlais maintenant, à quel niveau. Je sais que c’est difficile à répondre alors…”

Benny: Oui alors ça dépend toujours de la définition de ‘parler un langue.Donc moi je dis que je parle une langue si je peux me débrouiller.Disons d’un niveau B1. Et je pense que je parle 12 langues d’un niveau B1 jusqu’à C2. Mais couramment, je pense que je parle cinq langues.

Samuel: Couramment, comme ta langue maternelle, presque.

Benny: Non, couramment pour moi, ça veut dire que je peux sortir avec les gens, que je peux parler de n’importe quoi. Même en français, j’ai un accent, je fais des erreurs de temps en temps. Mais je peux faire presque tout dans cette langue.

Samuel: OK, c’est intéressant parce que tu as appris beaucoup plus de langues. Tu as appris peut-être euh… Je ne sais pas…

Benny: Oh oui, j’ai appris 25 langues, mais j’ai oublié la plupart de ces langue parce que je n’ai pas maintenu.

Samuel: Well, Thank you Benny for your time. And I hope you enjoyed it andbye bye, see you later.

Benny: Yes, thank you for having me. Take care everybody.

Thanks for taking the time to watch this interview. We hope you found it informative and helpful towards your language learning goals!