I started studying Chinese when I first arrived in China, in 2005. It’s hard to calculate how much time I’ve spent learning the language and advancing my Chinese, but it’s easily thousands of hours. If I were to start learning a new language now, I’m certain that I would do things differently: not just how I do, but what I do. On this ten plus year language learning journey I’ve been on, this book, Fluent Forever, has been one of the biggest “Aha” moments.

Authored by polyglot Gabriel Wyner, the subtitle of this book is “How to learn any language fast and never forget it”. Both aspects of this proposition are crucial, but I find the latter half especially attractive. What can I do to prevent the Chinese I speak now from slipping away one day in the future, when I’m not longer living in China? Fluent Forever aligns very well with my of the ideas that I’ve developed myself over the years: particularly adhering to the SRS (Spaced Repetition) algorithm to commit things to deep memory (covered in recent posts on Glossika and Cloze Sentences). Here’s a quick overview of the content of the book:

Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery, rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language.  And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. Soon, you’ll gain the ability to learn grammar and more difficult abstract words–without the tedious drills and exercises of language classes and grammar books.

If you aren’t familiar with the SRS algorithm, here’s a chart which explains how intelligently resurfacing difficult words and sentences places them into deep memory over time:

Takeaways from Fluent Forever

Fluent Forever, at 336 pages, is not a short book. But it is packed with practical guidelines on how to modify your learning process to achieve better results. Here are a few of those:

• Use SRS software: Choose whichever one suits you. Duolingo, Memrise, Anki, Cloze Master. All of these are vastly more effective than traditional flashcards because the cards automatically sort themselves based on your performance, displaying precisely the cards that you need to be seeing.
  
  
• Add images and sounds to your flashcards: by including these, you’re creating a deeper, multi sensory memory for a word or sentence. Add a personal connection for best effect. For example, include reference to a person, place, or experience that means something to you on the card, which acts as a mnemonic. For adding images to your cards, Google Images is perfect. Choose the wackiest image you can find. We’re good at remembering images that are violent, sexual, funny, or any combination of the three.
  
  
• Seek help from native speakers: you can get far on your own, but eventually you’ll need a native speaker to help identify problems with pronunciation, grammar, or something else. If you aren’t in a geographic place where you can find native speakers, there are websites like iTalki.com which make it easy to locate native speakers of any language to ask questions.
  
  
• Write short articles about your interests: submit them to native speakers that you know, or find someone online, and make flashcards from the corrections that you receive. This way, you’ll fill in any vocabulary or grammar that you’re missing. Repeat this process to improve. Lang-8.com is a great site to use for this.
  
  
• Read source material daily and mine for words and sentences: I wrote about this in the recent Cloze Sentences post, but the idea is to commit to reading at least one article in your target language daily. Make flashcards from sentences or words which are problematic for you to commit them to memory. I’ve come to deeply enjoy this process not just for the ability to improve skills, but because editorials written in another language often present a different perspective from your own language and culture.

These are just the tip of the iceberg, but they will give you an idea of the type of content in Fluent Forever.

Favorite Passages from Fluent Forever

Each of the hundred billion neurons in our brains are, on average, connected to seven thousand other neurons, in a dense web of more than 150,000 kilometers of nerve fibers. These interconnected webs are intricately involved in our memories, which is why scientists could never find the mazes in their rats. Each rat’s maze was spread throughout its brain. Whenever the scientists cut out a piece, they damaged only a small portion of the involved connections… These patterns of connections form in an elegantly simple, mechanical process: neurons that fire together wire together. Known as Hebb’s Law, this principle helps explain how we remember anything.

Your brain is a sophisticated filter, which makes irrelevant information forgettable and meaningful information memorable. Foreign words tend to fall into the “forgettable” category, because they sound odd, they don’t seem particularly meaningful, and they don’t have any connection to your own life experiences. You can get around this filter and make foreign words memorable by doing three things: Learn the sound system of your language. Bind those sounds to images. Bind those images to your past experiences.

To maximize efficiency, spend most of your time recalling rather than reviewing… You’ll accomplish this goal by creating flash cards that test your ability to recall a given word, pronunciation, or grammatical construction. Coupled with images and personal connections, these cards will form the foundation of a powerful memorization system.

If you’ve learned a so-called mission critical language—Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Korean, Pashto, Persian, Russian, or Urdu—then the CIA will eagerly snap you up and hand you $35,000 per language as a hiring bonus on your first day, not to mention additional monthly “language maintenance” bonuses. Every time I’ve been to an immersion program at Middlebury College, the CIA recruiters are always there in their crisp suits and snappy haircuts, putting on recruitment seminars. They’re desperate for multilingual people… Even if you don’t change careers, you’ve potentially increased your salary by 5–20 percent. Employers are willing to pay more for bilingual employees, even when those employees never need their extra languages to do their work. Employers see language skills as a sign of intelligence and competence, and that puts you—their newly bilingual employee—in higher demand.

You don’t just seem smarter when you know another language; you become smarter. By learning a language, you permanently change structures in your brain. Bilingual brains are measurably different than monolingual brains—certain brain regions are more developed—and recent studies show that you don’t need to be bilingual from birth to show these telltale signs of bilingualism. You just need to learn a language and maintain it; the better you learn it and the longer you maintain it, the more your brain will change.

Final Thoughts

Fluent Forever is a deep dive into advanced language learning. I wouldn’t recommend it for a casual learner, but if you are serious about committing to improving your skills in a language, I strongly recommend it. It was this book which got me started down the Anki rabbit hole, which goes very deep. And that’s really what this book is about: going deep into the science of language and memory to build a workflow that commits language to permanent memory.

Fluent Forever on Amazon

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon

“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon

“In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense.”

“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

“In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense.”

“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

“In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense.”

“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

“In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense.”

“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon

WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Plot Summary

The protagonist of 1984 is Winston Smith, a member of Oceania’s Outer Party, who works in the Ministry of Truth. Winston’s job is in the Records Department, where he rewrites and falsifies Oceania’s history to align with the government’s narrative.

Determined to resist the evil, dictatorial regime led by “Big Brother” which surveils and dictates everything he does, Winston locates and befriends a pair of collaborators. One, a love interest named Julia, and the other, a higher-ranking co-conspirator named O’Brien.

To confront evil in Oceania, Winston risks everything and faces his darkest fears.

Preservation of Liberty

1984 feels more like a cautionary tale than anything else. Orwell is describing (in terrifying detail) what could happen to the developed western democratic world should it tread the path of total government stewardship.

Oceania borrows elements from the Soviet Union, North Korea, Hitler’s Germany, and the People’s Republic of China. In these societies, individual liberties are disparaged in the name of societal betterment (in China, the word used to describe this is “harmony”, ??). In 1984, Winston transitions from doubtful of the official narrative to active subversion of the state, which threatens his life.

What price are you willing to pay for freedom? How much are you willing to deal with to avoid trouble? Orwell indirectly asks both of these questions of the reader, through Winston’s actions in the face of danger and injustice.

Mental Fortitude

A major theme in 1984 is the mental toughness Winston uses to maintain his psychological frame. The government presents a truth which Winston rejects because he knows it is false. He goes through the motions of life in Oceania while suppressing his knowledge that he is being fed lies.

When he faces hardship in the book’s second act, he must dig deep to hold onto his beliefs and principles as the Party seeks to break him.

It’s easy to see 1984 as a depressing forecast of what might seem like an inevitable future. I find Winston’s fortitude inspiring and encouraging. We all have a limit. But striving to maintain our sense of what is true and good and to act in accordance with those principles is the noblest thing we can do.

In moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body.

Centralization & Convenience

Technology has guided modern society, especially in the digital realm, toward a future of centralization. A few internet companies (especially Google, Amazon, and Facebook) wield overwhelming power over our personal information, which will willingly give in exchange for access to some incredible tools. Is it worth it?

In China, there is an app called WeChat, which has become the hub for digital life life. It’s like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon combined into a single app. If you want to know everything about everyone in China, it is almost certainly the best single-source of that. WeChat Wallet dominates to the degree that most of the people I know in China don’t even bring cash with them when they go out: they pay with their phones everywhere, for everything. After witnessing this in China, I’m convinced that this will spread to the U.S. and the developed world.

Can we accept these huge leaps in convenience without giving too much power to a central authority? In 1984 it seems that Orwell is not answering these questions as much as he is emphasizing the importance of asking them. 

Favorite Passages

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

“In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense.”

“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon

I first read this book decades ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I decided that I had to return to 1984. As time passes, the world in many ways comes to more and more resemble Orwell’s Oceania. I am optimistic about the future but it is a fact that we are stepping into a future where privacy has been deeply compromised in the name of convenience and centralization. What insights on this society was Orwell able to impart when he originally released this book in 1949?

1984 is considered one of the best science fiction books of all time because its warning message about the relationship between people, government, and truth is as prescient today as ever. Since Donald Trump’s election in late 2016, sales of have skyrocketed so much that 1984 is Suddenly a Best-Seller.

There’s a great chance you have already read 1984. In case you haven’t, I have no revealed any plot spoilers in this post.

WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Plot Summary

The protagonist of 1984 is Winston Smith, a member of Oceania’s Outer Party, who works in the Ministry of Truth. Winston’s job is in the Records Department, where he rewrites and falsifies Oceania’s history to align with the government’s narrative.

Determined to resist the evil, dictatorial regime led by “Big Brother” which surveils and dictates everything he does, Winston locates and befriends a pair of collaborators. One, a love interest named Julia, and the other, a higher-ranking co-conspirator named O’Brien.

To confront evil in Oceania, Winston risks everything and faces his darkest fears.

Preservation of Liberty

1984 feels more like a cautionary tale than anything else. Orwell is describing (in terrifying detail) what could happen to the developed western democratic world should it tread the path of total government stewardship.

Oceania borrows elements from the Soviet Union, North Korea, Hitler’s Germany, and the People’s Republic of China. In these societies, individual liberties are disparaged in the name of societal betterment (in China, the word used to describe this is “harmony”, ??). In 1984, Winston transitions from doubtful of the official narrative to active subversion of the state, which threatens his life.

What price are you willing to pay for freedom? How much are you willing to deal with to avoid trouble? Orwell indirectly asks both of these questions of the reader, through Winston’s actions in the face of danger and injustice.

Mental Fortitude

A major theme in 1984 is the mental toughness Winston uses to maintain his psychological frame. The government presents a truth which Winston rejects because he knows it is false. He goes through the motions of life in Oceania while suppressing his knowledge that he is being fed lies.

When he faces hardship in the book’s second act, he must dig deep to hold onto his beliefs and principles as the Party seeks to break him.

It’s easy to see 1984 as a depressing forecast of what might seem like an inevitable future. I find Winston’s fortitude inspiring and encouraging. We all have a limit. But striving to maintain our sense of what is true and good and to act in accordance with those principles is the noblest thing we can do.

In moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body.

Centralization & Convenience

Technology has guided modern society, especially in the digital realm, toward a future of centralization. A few internet companies (especially Google, Amazon, and Facebook) wield overwhelming power over our personal information, which will willingly give in exchange for access to some incredible tools. Is it worth it?

In China, there is an app called WeChat, which has become the hub for digital life life. It’s like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon combined into a single app. If you want to know everything about everyone in China, it is almost certainly the best single-source of that. WeChat Wallet dominates to the degree that most of the people I know in China don’t even bring cash with them when they go out: they pay with their phones everywhere, for everything. After witnessing this in China, I’m convinced that this will spread to the U.S. and the developed world.

Can we accept these huge leaps in convenience without giving too much power to a central authority? In 1984 it seems that Orwell is not answering these questions as much as he is emphasizing the importance of asking them. 

Favorite Passages

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

“In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense.”

“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

“There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere.”

Doublethink “is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all Party members, is to be able to believe two contradictory truths at the same time.”

Final Thoughts

It’s been almost 70 years since 1984 was published and today it feels just as relevant as ever. From what the NYT and others say, Trump’s 2016 victory has played a big role in the resurgent popularity of dystopian novels like this one. But the issue is much larger as surveillance scandals, particularly involving security agencies like the NSA, present deep and enduring concerns for privacy, freedom, and liberty.

1984 isn’t just a riveting narrative. It’s a warning that modern society will naturally gravitate toward centralized control unless we actively oppose it to defend individual liberty.

1984 on Amazon