Correction: it's impossible to learn another language!
Like one of the people mentioned in the article, I have a lifetime love of languages. I used to listen to short wave broadcasts back in the 70s and 80s and enjoyed just hearing exotic languages. One of my favorite things on the Internet is getting to listen to languages that my grandparents lived and died without hearing a single word of. And not this mainstream stuff . . . I mean really exotic stuff like Maltese, Breton, Basque, Greenlandic, Georgian, Albanian, Mongolian. Stuff like that. I can't and never will understand a word, but I just love listening (or reading) and knowing what they sound (or look) like.
I've tried to learn languages all my life and have been successful only with one: Biblical Hebrew, a textual language which is acquired and learned visually. I've tried to learn Israeli Hebrew for decades and simply can't do it. As the article says, I can't instantaneously translate in my mind and send it to my tongue at one and the same time.
Well . . . now I know why. I'm the farthest thing from a "chameleon" one can possibly be. I am but a simple redneck and unable to put on any other skin.
It's nice to finally know what my handicap has been.
That's right ... and that's a poor way to learn a language.
I knew I was getting somewhere in high school when I realize I was thinking in French ... no translation involved. Humor is a great way to get there. Jokes don't translate very well.
I would suggest that you go and live among people who speak only Hebrew and insist — no English — its incredible what you can do when you have no other choice :) I speak from experience on that!!
I think the problem is you are trying to translate in your head. The best way is to just immerse yourself — this is hard because you have to go back to being a child — it is incredibly frustrating when you can only communicate in basic sentences
“I am but a simple redneck and unable to put on any other skin.” — I think “rednecks” are under-rated, furthermore, by the definition on www.dictionary.com, one can’t call you, ZC, by any means “uneducated” — far, far from that definition be ye.