学习语言并不是一件容易的事情，但是Lydia Maohova却乐在其中。她每隔两年就想学习一门新的外语，并且正在学习第8门外语。她在TED演讲中介绍了自己学习外语的方法和窍门。如果你觉得学习语言很难，可能是没有找到合适的方法，这则演讲或许可以帮助你。
中英全文（来自网络）
I love learning foreign languages. In fact, I love it so much that I like to learn a new language every two years, currently working on my eighth one. When people find that out about me, they always ask me, "How do you do that? What's your secret?" And to be honest, for many years, my answer would be, "I don't know. I simply love learning languages." But people were never happy with that answer. They wanted to know why they are spending years trying to learn even one language, never achieving fluency, and here I come, learning one language after another. They wanted to know the secret of polyglots, people who speak a lot of languages. And that made me wonder, too, how do actually other polyglots do it? What do we have in common? And what is it that enables us to learn languages so much faster than other people? I decided to meet other people like me and find that out.
我喜欢学外语。实际上，这种痴迷让我每两年就想学一门新的外语，现在我正在学第八门外语。当人们得知此事后，总是问我，“你怎么做到的？你的秘诀是什么？”说实话，这么多年来，我的回答总是，“我不知道啊。我只是喜欢学语言。”但是人们从来都不会对这个回答感到满意。他们想知道为何他们花了多年试着学习哪怕只有一门语言，却从未达到流利的程度，而我却能够学了一门再学一门。他们想知道多语言者，即说多种语言的人的秘密。我也对此感到好奇，其他的多语言者到底是怎么做的？我们有什么共同点吗？是什么让我们较之他人能够更快的学习语言？我决定见见其他像我一样的人，并试着找寻背后的答案。
The best place to meet a lot of polyglots is an event where hundreds of language lovers meet in one place to practice their languages. There are several such polyglot events organized all around the world, and so I decided to go there and ask polyglots about the methods that they use.
能够遇到很多多语言者的最佳地点是聚集了数百名多语言者的地方，他们在那里进行练习。世界各地有许多类似的多语言者活动，所以我决定去看看，打听一下他们各自使用的方法。
And so I met Benny from Ireland, who told me that his method is to start speaking from day one. He learns a few phrases from a travel phrasebook and goes to meet native speakers and starts having conversations with them right away. He doesn't mind making even 200 mistakes a day, because that's how he learns, based on the feedback. And the best thing is, he doesn't even need to travel a lot today, because you can easily have conversations with native speakers from the comfort of your living room, using websites.
我遇到了来自爱尔兰的本尼，他告诉我他用的方法是从第一天就开始说出口。他从一本旅游指南上学了一些词组，然后就去见母语者，立马和他们展开对话。他不介意一天犯200个错误，因为这就是他基于反馈的学习方式。最棒的一点是，如今他甚至不需要出游，因为你只需要呆在惬意的房间中，就能在网络上和母语者进行交谈。
I also met Lucas from Brazil who had a really interesting method to learn Russian. He simply added a hundred random Russian speakers on Skype as friends, and then he opened a chat window with one of them and wrote "Hi" in Russian. And the person replied, "Hi, how are you?" Lucas copied this and put it into a text window with another person, and the person replied, "I'm fine, thank you, and how are you?" Lucas copied this back to the first person, and in this way, he had two strangers have a conversation with each other without knowing about it.
我还遇到了来自巴西的卢卡斯，他学习俄语的方法很有意思。他就在Skype上随机添加了上百个说俄语的人，然后打开其中一个人的聊天框，用俄语写下“嗨”。然后对方回复，“嗨，你好吗？”卢卡斯了复制这段话，再把它发给另一个人，然后另一个人回复，“我很好，谢谢，你怎么样？”卢卡斯又把这段话复制发给第一个人，这样，他就让两个陌生人在完全不知情的情况下展开了交谈。
And soon he would start typing himself, because he had so many of these conversations that he figured out how the Russian conversation usually starts. What an ingenious method, right?
过不了多久，他就可以自己打字了，因为他看了那么多的对话，已经知道俄语的交流大概是怎么开始的了。很聪明的办法，是吧？
上一篇：揭秘：蔬菜放冰箱如何才能保鲜更久？
下一篇：“连花清瘟”用英语怎么说？哈，原来这么简单？！
微信公众号搜索“译员”关注我们，每天为您推送翻译理论和技巧，外语学习及翻译招聘信息。