A language for those who moved
Everyday life trips not on grammar but on a shop sign, a pharmacy prescription and a government form. Plus the feeling of being a stranger here, which grows thicker with every month without the language. In a week or two, twenty minutes a day, start recognising the letters on signs and understanding what is written on price tags.
The order
- First the script, not words. While you cannot read the signs, the whole city stays a picture. Armenian has 39 signs, Georgian 33, and they are figured out in a week or two, a few per sitting.
- Then — rescue phrases. “I don’t understand”, “repeat, please”, “slower”. These are not taught for politeness: they bring back a conversation that has already gone wrong — and you will have one in your very first week.
- Next — everyday life. Shop, pharmacy, transport, rent. Not “the thousand most frequent words” but the three hundred you will need before the month is out.
- And one phrase about yourself. “I am learning your language, speak slower”. Admitting that your language is still bad almost always makes the other person more patient — that works more reliably than any stock of words.
Languages
What this is based on
- This holds not only in experiments but in ordinary classrooms, with real students.checked many timesMawson & Kang, 2025, Behavioral Sciences 15(6):771 · 22 studies, d = 0.54 (confidence interval 0.31–0.77). The authors warn that individual studies disagree widely.
- Deciding exactly when and where helps more than deciding to study at all. “After my morning coffee, in the kitchen, ten minutes” works; “I really should get to it” does not.checked many timesGollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38 · 94 trials, more than 8,000 participants, d = 0.65.
- Fear of making mistakes gets in the way of learning a language, and it gets in the way badly. It is one of the most reliably measured findings in the entire field.checked many timesTeimouri, Goetze & Plonsky, 2019, Studies in Second Language Acquisition 41(2) · 19,933 participants from 23 countries; correlation with results r = −0.36.
What usually stops people
Everyone here speaks Russian — why bother with the local language?
In the centre — yes. In a government office, a neighbourhood pharmacy, at the neighbours’, in documents — no. And how people treat you changes from the very first phrase in the local language, even if it is a single one.
Is it worth learning the language if I am leaving soon?
Maybe. But reading shop signs pays off within a week, not a year — it is the only part of the language that starts working almost at once.
What if there is no time for classes?
This is not a course anyway. Twenty minutes on the road, split into a few sittings, give more than two hours on Saturdays — and that is measured, not guessed.
Frequently asked
Everyone here speaks Russian — why bother with the local language?
In the centre — yes. In a government office, a neighbourhood pharmacy, at the neighbours’, in documents — no. And how people treat you changes from the very first phrase in the local language, even if it is a single one.
Is it worth learning the language if I am leaving soon?
Maybe. But reading shop signs pays off within a week, not a year — it is the only part of the language that starts working almost at once.
What if there is no time for classes?
This is not a course anyway. Twenty minutes on the road, split into a few sittings, give more than two hours on Saturdays — and that is measured, not guessed.