Thursday 18 August 2011

Subliminal language learning - The results of the experiment.

You may remember, although there is no reason why you should, this post from last year where I set out to prove that I could learn a language from scratch without doing any work at all.

The language in question was Icelandic. The way I was going to learn it was through a "subliminal CD" which cost me $3.99 including shipping and taxis (sic) and was "developed by Medical doctors and PhDs in psychology", but sadly not in icelandic.

The plan was to listen to the CD regularly in the car and on my mp3 player. I gave myself exactly one year to do it and I, and the occasional unwitting passenger, have been "subliminally learning Icelandic" religiously for exactly 12 months.

The idea behind this was that if I ever met an Icelander I would be able to converse with them fluently in their own language and they would be really surprised, but not as surprised as I would be.

You will both be pleased to know that the experiment has now come to an end.

Some people said it could not be done.

They were right.

It was a huge failure.

I can categorically testify that it is impossible to to learn a language subliminally or, as we say in Icelandic:

það er ekki komið í staðinn fyrir vinnu*.


























*there's no substitute for hard work.

2 comments:

The Editor said...

From your explanatuion it's not clear where the Icelandic input came from. Was it a separate Icelandic course

Dom said...

There was no other course. The CD makers claimed that you could learn Icelandic from the subliminal content on the CD. You listen to the CD and you can speak Icelandic. Or not.

I am currently studying Icelandic online here: http://icelandiconline.is/ and I am using the Talk Now Icelandic course to practise vocabulary. http://eurotalk.com/en/store/learn/icelandic/talknow/cd