Yes, that’s right. A portion to success in anything is to clock 10,000 hours, 417 full days into whatever you do. Or so claims Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Blink“, in his latest book “Outliers“. After interviewing many extraordinary people like Bill Gates and the Beatles, he comes to the conclusion that one important component of success is to have 10,000 hours of experience. Bill Gates started programming in 1969 as a 13 year old. And continued to spend all his free time programing - all the way until he set up Microsoft. The Beatles were forced to play 19 hours everyday for years in Germany before they had their big break. And by time they made it big in the US, they had already performed 1,000 gigs.

It’s simple and blatantly obvious, if you think about it. A person with the opportunity and dedication to sing for 10,000 hours or geek out for 10,000 is obviously going to be more skilled than someone (of equal talent) who only sings in the shower or geek out only when s/he majors in Computer Science.

With that said, Gladwell isn’t saying that 10,000 hours guarantees that you will become the next Bill Gates. It’s just that Bill Gates was rich and fortunate enough to clock 10,000 hours of programming in an era where computers were not easily accessible to the public. So social status, cultural background, era of birth, innate talent and the magic 10,000 hours all played critical roles in his success. In short, Bill lead a life of luck, while never forgetting hard work.

However, Gladwell does point out that 10,000 hours is the magic number that gets you good at something - good enough to be the best in your country, or in some cases, the world.

Have I clocked 10,000 hours for anything? Probably.

Surfing the Internet: 20,000 hours
I started surfing at age 9. In 1995, my dad brought home a modem to connect to the Internet. I can still remember the excitement in his eyes. From there I owned a Hotmail account, logged onto mIRC, and regularly scoured Yahoo!. Then at age 11, I stumbled upon a Backstreet Boys fansite hosted on Geocities. It was too pretty for words - then. And that’s how started learning HTML.

Over the past 12 years, I’ve clocked in 20,000 hours in email, chat, surfing and web design. Not sure how many hours I’ve spent with web design, but it’s safe to say somewhere close to 3,000 hours.

Watching Anime: 1,800 hours
I’m sure I’ve spent more time doing other things in my life, but anime deserves an honorable mention. Here’s why: I started watching anime in 2006. According to my anime list, I’ve watched about 75 days worth of anime. That means I’ve clocked 1,800 hours within 2 years. It’s a scary thought, but I now enjoy an interesting byproduct.

Language Mastery at 10,000 hours?

So it struck me. Watching 1,800 hours of anime is probably why I can easily understand colloquial Japanese. It means that I’ve spent 1,800 hours listening to spoken Japanese (while reading subtitles). For the record, I’ve never tried to study Japanese beyond the alphabet system. I can barely read, write or even speak Japanese.

And this also explains certain strengths and weaknesses I have with other foreign languages. I’ve read a lot of French in my life. I’d read up literary works, news and even blogs. But I’ve never had the opportunity to speak. So I couldn’t ever have a decent French conversation without interjecting with “ummm…” after every 5 words. As for Chinese, I’ve always understood it well. That’s ’cause my mom would scold and lecture me in Chinese. But I’d always retort in English, and staunchly refused to read anything with Chinese characters on it. So my strength lies with understanding Chinese but not speaking, reading or writing.

So the key to master a second language is to clock 10,000 hours and divide it equally amongst reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Moral of the story: Get off your lazy butt and start clocking 10,000 hours if you want to be the best. And if you’re learning a second language, spend 2,500 hours watching movies, 2,500 hours reading the newspaper, 2,500 hours skyping with foreigners, and 2,500 writing a blog. When you finally reach 10,000 hours, your second language will have probably become as easy as your first.

In the meantime, I will attempt to get off my lazy butt and clock another 8,000 hours in web design, read more books in Chinese, and practice strumming the guitar.

Have you spent 10,000 hours in an activity? (Please don’t say school, work or sleep. That’s the same for everyone.) What do you think the keys to success are?

In an article from New Scientist, a man claims that his grandfather could speak 70 languages, and write in 56. And he’s never even attended school. This man also explained that while they were traveling to Thailand, his grandfather admitted that he couldn’t speak Thai. However, in less than 2 weeks, he was able to argue with vendors for discounts - like a native! Years later, the writer was sent to Thailand for a job, and returned to converse with his grandfather in Thai. Even after spending months in Thailand, his command of Thai is still far below his grandfather’s.

As ridiculous as this story might be, it is a true one. And according to many experts, the existence of of hyperpolyglots are not uncommon throughout history. Why hyperpolyglots have sprung up throughout history, no one knows. Some experts claim that it’s intelligence. Others say that it’s a talent. Some others say it’s a side effect of a medical condition. And a few reckon that it’s pure hard work and interest.

For me? I would have to agree with the latter. Learning a language is not a talent and has absolutely nothing to do with your IQ. It’s a process, and with time and effort, normal people like you and me can do the same.

I’m not incredibly smart. I suck at math. I suck at art. I don’t particularly like science. I don’t particularly like school. But one thing’s for sure: I never ever stopped learning languages. When I was a child, I started speaking so late in my life that my parents thought that I was mute. It probably had something to do with the way I was raised. My father spoke to me in English. My mother spoke to me in Mandarin. My grandmother spoke to me in Hokkien. Once I started speaking, I always spoke in three languages, often repeating myself. If I wanted apple, for example, I’d always say “apple, ping guo, peng gor.” I’m not sure why I did that, and why I’d know that apple stood for ping guo and ping guo stood for peng gor. But it happened.

Currently, I understand 8 languages and 2 dialects. In terms of proficiency, I’m bilingual in Hokken and English; almost bilingual with Mandarin, and passively bilingual to French. (Passive here means that I can understand and read French fluently, but I still struggle with speaking and writing.) I’ve had formal education in Spanish, Malay, Indonesian and Korean. I’ve also picked up Cantonese colloquially to survive in a cantonese-dominant city. And recently, I’m also able to understand intermediate colloquial Japanese and basic Kansai dialect as an unintended side effect from watching too many animes. My Japanese understanding is at the point, where I don’t need sub-titles for certain genres of anime anymore.

(To the ignorant South East Asians, Malay and Indonesian are very different languages, despite sharing some similar vocabulary. The difference between Malay and Indonesian is like the difference between Portuguese and Spanish. You can’t count them as the same language just because they share a common pool of words. The grammatical structure between Malay and Indonesia are so different that misunderstandings can occur in a 5 minute conversation between a Malay and an Indonesian.)

My point here? A superior brain is not needed in learning multiple languages; it’s passion. For me, learning a language is the only way to completely understand another’s culture from their perspective so I always try to learn new ones. And as the number of languages I know increases, the easier it becomes to learn a new language, since most languages share similar roots. For example, since I read French and Spanish, I can understand some basic Italian.

But of course, learning a language and mastering one is completely different. Mastering a language requires a lot of painful effort and time, if you’re not a language genius. I needed 7 years of school, starting from 5th grade to 12th grade to be passively bilingual in French. I needed 4 years at university to be almost bilingual in Chinese. And even then, both are still lacking compared to my English.

But then, I was inspired. I stumbled upon many blogs, where Japanese people blog in English so that they could improve their English. The amount of effort, the amount of pain, the amount of time they put in so incredibly admirable. All this make me wonder, if I had put in that much effort into learning French and Chinese, I’d be fully bilingual by now. But I’m only 22; I have a lifetime left to master all these languages. So, I decided to have my very own second-language blog, where I will predominantly blog in Chinese, and occasionally in one of the 6 other languages. I’ll start with one entry per week, and slowly build up from there. I now present to you:

LANGUAGEDIARY.COM

So ありがとうございます Kirin, PONTA, Weber, Little_sun and Natsuwo-beer for being wonderful inspirations. I hope that as you all improve your English as I’ll improve my French, Chinese, and Japanese (once I find myself a teacher) too!

So do you speak a second language? How long have you learned it for? If you don’t, do you want to learn a new language? Which ones? Why?

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I’m sorry if this entry is lackluster. Call it writer’s block if you will, I’m just not feeling the passion to write recently.