WHAT LANGUAGES
CAN YOU LEARN WITH THE LANGUAGE FORMULA?
The Language Formula is a meta-learning course. The principles of language learning—or rather, language hacking—will be applicable to learning any language. That said, there are some limitations. Because TLF is heavily reading-based. Reading is used as a gateway into improving speech comprehension. Hence, you should be able to read your target language. Therefore:
Languages you can learn with TLF
—are the languages whose writing system you either already know or can learn relatively quickly. For example, as an English speaker, you can easily learn how to read any language that uses the Latin/Roman script. You can also learn other true alphabets, such as Greek or Russian, relatively quickly. The idea is that you should be able to teach yourself how to read the language you’re learning early on and with relative ease.
The easiest for English speakers
English (duh!)
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Catalan
Dutch
Danish & Norwegian
Swedish
Finnish
Estonian
Romanian
Polish
Czech
Slovenian
Turkish
Indonesian
Malay
Swahili
Tagalog
Slightly harder for English speakers
Languages using the Cyrillic script:
Russian
Ukrainian
Bulgarian
Serbian
Croatian
Kurdish
Mongolian
Kazakh
Tatar
Other alphabetic languages
Greek
Korean
Languages you probably can’t learn with TLF
—are languages whose writing system is not easily learned because it is very different from what you’re used to. For the Language Formula to be useful to you, you should be able to read in your target language. So, by extension, if you can already read the Arabic script (as a speaker of, say, Persian), then you can use the Language Formula to learn Arabic. If you understand Chinese characters as a speaker of Korean, then you can learn Mandarin or Cantonese using the Language Formula. if you already taught yourself to read Japanese hiragana and katakana, then TLF will help you learn Japanese.
Very hard for English speakers
Languages with logographic and syllabic writing systems:
Mandarin Chinese
Cantonese
Japanese
Vietnamese
Languages with abjad “alphabets”:
Arabic
Farsi
Urdu
Hebrew
Languages with abugida “alphabets”:
Amharic
Hindi
Tamil
Telugu
Kannada
Punjabi
Javanese
Thai
Another important variable you should consider is language support—in other words, whether you can easily find materials and personally-relevant content in your target language.
Languages like French, Spanish, German, Russian, Polish, Greek, and so on are all well-supported—there are a plethora of materials, such as books, audiobooks, blogs, and YouTube videos, that you can easily access and use going forward. It’s not the case for all languages.
The best indicator of language support is the number of speakers the language has. If the language is spoken by millions you’ll experience no issues finding resources in this language and the Language Formula will be immensely useful to you. If your target language is spoken by just a few thousands of people, however—like Hawaiian, Navajo, or Armenian—you might have a problem, unless you have direct access to native speakers who can guide your search and help you out.
If your target language is official in at least one country, it’s a good sign, and there might be hope. If not, then you’re likely trying to learn an endangered language. It will be tough, and finding materials and speakers will be a struggle.
Reach out at hello@thelanguageformula.com and I can answer your specific query on whether or not The Language Formula might be a suitable solution for learning your target language.