After the 68 hours without sleep, was he still able to speak his native language? ;-)


The sleep deprivation....seems like a means to an end. I suspect that it puts you in states that might happen to facilitate language learning - eg, you might hallucinate contexts a little more vividly, with more feeling, etc. When the contexts arise again, and it's time to use the language, it flows out of you.

In short, the sleep deprivation was little more than an extended trance.


Having real, live people to interact with in the language might be the more irreplaceable part of the 68 hours.


--Brian