In his series of language books, of which Conversational Romanian Quick and Easy: The Most Innovative Technique to Learn the Romanian Language (2020) is one, Yatir Nitzany believes he has found a novel way to pick up the basics of a language with little fuss. In this very short book he imparts the method he used, one he believes will work for anyone who follows it carefully.
His breakthrough came thus. He was attempting to learn Spanish and, as do many others, found his progress frustratingly slow. One day he realised that every language has a core of essential common words, and if these can be mastered it is possible to communicate adequately with native speakers. He worked out what those words were in Spanish and ended up with a list of 350 most likely to be spoken in real-life situations. These were capable of multiple connections with each other and, once memorised, were the means to generate enough sentences to be able to hold a conversation.
Putting the idea into practice, he found within a week he could converse in Spanish, and he went on to further study, using his technique as the basis to expand his understanding. Then he applied the principles to other languages, including Romanian, realising they were all amenable to the 350-word method. He was able to learn them with ease to a reasonable standard (the key words here being a reasonable standard).
The method is simplicity itself. The reader learns batches of words which are then shown in sample sentences to assist memorisation. As the learner progresses through the sets, words learned earlier reappear in the sample sentences to reinforce them. Nitzany warns that each set must be mastered before going onto the next, then returned to regularly for review, until all 350 words are firmly memorised.
This is not a complete language-learning course; Nitzany concedes it is a method to allow the novice to be able to converse without frills, though it provides a platform for further elaboration. It does not teach the fine points of grammar, and only the present tense is employed, but he argues these are unnecessary to get by and can be learned later. The important thing is to be understood and this, he says, the learner scrupulously sticking to his method will be.
It sounds great for those with no prior knowledge, particularly useful for holidaymakers who wish to do more than ask for a couple of beers in a bar, or want a head start before embarking on a course. So, does it actually work as claimed? In my opinion, probably not. Any method promising that a language can be picked up by rote learning really has to be overpromising. There is no indication how Nitzany chose this particularly group of words as the key 350 in the entire language, and the selection feels subjective rather than based on a quantitative linguistic analysis.
Despite the book’s title, without some structure, trying to learn 350 words by constant repetition is not going to be easy and is certainly not going to be quick. As for innovative, this is rather like a paper version of Memrise’s online flashcards, but duller. The sample sentences help, but they are full of brackets with singular/plural and masculine/feminine constructions which look confusing and add complexity to the task of comprehension. Some grammar rules are provided, though they are of limited help without more explanation
The likely outcome of following this process is that the learner will be able to perform well in recognition/recall tests of the individual words, but not be able to generate novel sentences fluently with roughly accurate adherence to standard syntax and without butchering word endings. Learning this way, slavishly memorising lists of words for the recommended 30 minutes a day, sounds absolutely tedious and will likely lead to demotivation.
It would be interesting to know whether anyone has relied on Nitzany’s approach to master the basics of any of the languages he covers, of which there are over a dozen, plus quite a few Arabic dialects, and can hold a conversation in real situations. He claims ‘hundreds’ of learners have used his books successfully but I haven’t found any testimonials to support it. If anyone wishes to try learning the Nitzany way, it is best utilised in conjunction with other approaches that provide greater variety of practice.
