16:00 spent about 2 hours reading through the 3 books

Can you explain that? You read three grammar books in 2 hours? Or do you mean you browsed over all of them for a couple of hours?

In the meantime, I’ve had telephone conversations with clients and friends in Hong Kong, China, Indonesia and a Swedish group that are hiring me to run a workshop on cross-cultural communication. With all of these people, used the various relevant languages. …
So – how much time do I spend a day? It’s my life. I’ve built my life up around things that allow me to use the languages – people now pay me to do it!

As for remembering vocab, I use mnemonics, pegging and other ’standard’ tools, but also link meanings into sounds, colours, shapes, emotions, experiences and other words and extralinguistic things that I already have from other languages. When I meet a new word, in most cases I can relate it to another word(s) that I know – I can probably figure the etymology – and understand the sound / meaning shifts that have occured, and will then look for other related meanings.
Example – this is one story i used to remember the Indonesian days of the week when i was a kid-
On Sunday, people mingle (Minggu) at church,
On Monday, people are back to sinnin’ (Senin)
On Tuesday like Mario the Italian from Mario Bros shaking his hands in the air, they say ‘At lasta (Selasa)- Monday’s over)
On Wednesday, to cleanse the sins from Monday, the Rabi (Rabu) Comes (Kamis) and performs a strange sin cleansing ceremony by jumping up and down vigorously on a mat (Jumat)- just in time for the Sabbath (Sabtu) and going to church to mingle (Minggu) again on Sunday -
Sunday – Minggu
Monday – Senin
Tuesday – Selasa
Wednesday – Rabu
Thursday – Kamis
Friday – Jumat
Saturday – Sabtu
Sunday – Minggu

I t only takes a few seconds to put these kinds of stories together – and they stick! (try to go over all the stories i make up each day as I’m dozing off to sleep each night … and when I wake up in the middle of the night)… actually, sometimes they keep me from sleeping!

When I’m in my element, I can remember a lot of stuff… but at the same time, I might forget where I placed my car keys.

Hope this helps
Stu.

I certainly didn’t expect you to end up here! Nice to see you drop by.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the your / you’re blunder. That’s something that native English speakers (at least the American variety of us) make all the time.

Regarding any topics I’m interested in… well, after watching the videos, I have many questions, actually! You were asked how many hows a day you spent reading language books / dictionaries, but you ended up being cut off when the hosts took you over to your piles of books. I was curious about the number of hours you spent on language acquisition.

I was also curious about an elaboration on the sounds to shapes bit. I watched it twice, and was still a bit confused about what was going on.

Lastly, do you use the typical mnemonic systems – pegs, links, stories, etc. – to memorize such a huge amount of words (3-5K in one week), or do you do something different than the most of us?

Sorry for all of the questions, but hey, you offered. If I can get language learning advice from a fellow who can speak more than a dozen languages, I’ll take it!

You know, when I was a kid my spelling was a lot better! … have just gone in and fixed up the mistake (likely to be one of many). At the age of 4 and 5, my grandfather used to go through and correct the American grammar and slang in blue pen in my “Sesame Street Encylopaedia” series before he’d let me read them… He’d be rolling in his grave if he saw me make a mistake like that. Nowadays I think more in sounds than I do correct spelling. Don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
As for blogging, I would like to blog a lot more than I do. Let me know of any topics you’re interested in.

Stu.