Can you talk more about how you learned thousands of words? I've been drilling words with quizlet, and find that it takes ~10 drills to burn a given word into my brain.
Why do you think it will take less than that? Why are you assuming that there is a magic bullet?
Yes, some people seem to find it easier than others, but acquiring another language takes time. For some people, a lot of time, and there is, to misquote, no "Royal Road to Language."[0]
People are always asking for the easy way to do things. Pratchett wrote about this[1][2] in the context of writing. Sometimes there is nothing better than taking a mashup of techniques and just putting in the time.
I've never mastered a second language, but I've got to the point of having conversations in acquired languages. I always use the same technique:
* Memorise 100 phrases from a phrase book
* Memorise 500 words
* Substitute memorised words into memorised phrases
* Read a book in the target language: preferrably an action novel aimed at 14 year old boys.
Why do you think it will take less than that? Why are you assuming that there is a magic bullet?
Because surely by now someone has hack disrupted this space with a webapp using DJango and swift across the whole stack with a leveraged angel investor buyout round.
Basically using a memeory technique to associate the foreign word with the german.
In the end I stopped using their software as it isn't so great and created my own spreadsheet with the word, foreign word and memory link. I then loaded this into some flashcard software on android. Then several times a day I would try to keep on top of my flaschards. After around 6 months I had gotten through the cards and was getting a reasonable recall rate.
Yes, some people seem to find it easier than others, but acquiring another language takes time. For some people, a lot of time, and there is, to misquote, no "Royal Road to Language."[0]
People are always asking for the easy way to do things. Pratchett wrote about this[1][2] in the context of writing. Sometimes there is nothing better than taking a mashup of techniques and just putting in the time.
I've never mastered a second language, but I've got to the point of having conversations in acquired languages. I always use the same technique:
* Memorise 100 phrases from a phrase book
* Memorise 500 words
* Substitute memorised words into memorised phrases
* Read a book in the target language: preferrably an action novel aimed at 14 year old boys.
* Lather, rinse, repeat.
[0] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euclid#Attributed
[1] http://terrypratchettappreciation.tumblr.com/post/6680240757...
[2] http://jackscarab.tumblr.com/post/105468067469/i-get-asked-a...