Lessons Learned From "I Learned Italian in 7 Days"

A few years ago, a young famous YouTuber named Nathaniel Drew posted a video series titled “I Learned Italian in 7 Days,” composed of two episodes.

Being a language learning aficionado, and having already subscribed to his channel by then, that sensational title really piqued my interest. So, I pressed Play to see how fluent Nathaniel got in the language of Dante within a space of just one week.

Spoiler alert: in the second and final episode of this series, Nathaniel holds a conversation in Italian with his native-speaker friend Giuseppe for a few minutes to demonstrate how much he was able to learn within that short timeframe.

Check this out:

Naturally, Nathaniel stumbles along here and there, but he can already engage Giuseppe in a conversation in a way that’s meaningful enough for them to keep talking. That truly showcases his remarkable talent in learning a new subject.

Having said that, I have to respectfully disagree with Nathaniel’s characterization of the language learning curriculums of public schools as “a joke,” in the sense that it’s not effective enough to enable students to talk in foreign tongues. That sounds a bit arrogant and presumptuous to me.

Nathaniel seems oblivious of the fact that a second language is not the only subject that a typical high school student needs to contend with in preparation for their college education, so it’s only natural that they achieve a very limited degree of fluency in their target language.

If they had whole days to spare to fully dive into their studies of a foreign tongue, I’m sure they would achieve much better results, even if they used the same traditional learning methods as their existing curriculums.

Coming back to the content of Nathaniel’s video, one thing that truly stood out to me is the importance of being very selective in learning vocabulary, by focusing exclusively on the top 1,000 Italian words. Based on my own experience of learning multiple languages, I fully agree with his approach to acquiring vocabulary in an effective way.

Given the limited time that we can spare for language learning each day, it’s vital that we focus on the most commonly used words first, before learning more specific or advanced vocabulary. If you’re learning words from a vocabulary list or dictionary for the first time, make sure you begin with the most basic ones, preferably those written for elementary learners or even young children.

Studying a whole dictionary with a limited vocabulary content is much better than studying a tiny segment of a voluminous and comprehensive dictionary, even if the numbers of words you learn are exactly the same between the former and the latter. The former enables you to see the forest without having your vision blocked by the individual trees; the latter is the opposite, and you’re bound to get bogged down somewhere among the trees without ever seeing what the entire forest looks like.

In my own case, I’m currently learning words from a French dictionary that’s not too extensive and only contains moderately advanced words. Since I already know around 90 percent of the headwords, I don’t find it too overwhelming, so I’m confident that I can keep learning.

This journey of studying vocabulary is instilling in me the sense of priority and the importance of being highly selective in what I learn. I’m looking forward to witnessing how my learning philosophy will evolve by the time I reach the end of my current dictionary.