A few years ago my company started hiring seasonal workers from Mexico. They didn't speak English, and my coworkers didn't speak Spanish. Management wanted everyone to use translation apps, but I found it to be inefficient and both parties were unsure if the app actually used the correct words for the context. So I took the most important words used in my department, and turned it into a game of repetition with my crewmate. He would say the word in Spanish, I would say it in English, and the rest of the day I would say it in Spanish and he would say it in English. After the 2nd week of work, we could clearly and neatly convey what needed to be done for each job, and we were able to get to know each other and work comfortably. The biggest hurdle is overcoming the fear of sounding awkward.
Your last sentence hits so close to home. Except for me it isn't really a hurdle more like a colossal mountain. I'm awkward around people as it is, I don't think I can ever bring myself to speak to a native speaker.
@@primary_magic1227 That's understandable, I still get self conscious from time to time, especially when I need to talk to groups of native-Spanish speakers. I just figured that trying to communicate and sounding like an idiot would go a long way toward earning their respect, as opposed to just shoving a translated app message in their faces. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn and get better, it helps to see it as empowering instead of embarrassing.
@@TheBaronVSP Yeah I guess that's true. Such an obvious realization but still something I tend to forget a lot. Thank you for the reply! Ooh and I like the way you handled the situation at your company. Efficient and by far a better way to create a good relationship with a coworker. Props to you for that!
@@primary_magic1227 what helped me get over this fear was realizing that every time I spoke to someone for whom english wasn't their first language, I was expecting them to do this and maybe sound awkward to communicate with me, while not being willing to do that myself. I realized how much I appreciate it and am impressed when a non-native speaker says something as simple as like hello/goodbye/thank you
I think thats what pidgin languages are. 2 different groups share only the most important words and learn a combination that everyone involved can understand well enough to do whatever they needed to get done
I spent 14 years learning French at school. Forgot most of it at uni. Decided to switch my PS4 to French for fun. I learnt more usable French in 3 months of gaming than 14 years in class
I learned more hanging around old online chat rooms, even when their numerous colloquialisms and abbreviations, then I did in four years of school...actually using a language is what really makes it stick.
Same here. I have Chinese relatives who tried teaching me Chinese. Switching my game to Chinese and watching some Chinese videos taught me a ton more than I ever learned from a decade of relatives trying to teach me Chinese formally.
You acquired French instead of learning it. That's the secret. Check out Stephen Krashen regarding this topic and throw away your old ideas of how languages get into brains :D
I learned all the curses in Italian in Highschool playing assassins creed with the language in Italian with just English subtitles and referred too my Italian friends on my accuracy.
One of my college English professors started her class by telling us "I am here to teach you academic English. This is not the English you speak, it is not the English you read in a novel or a newspaper. It is the English used in an academic environment to write academic papers and nothing more." That line was a lightbulb moment for me that I have always carried with me since.
I really wonder why this is the approach. I guess in college it makes more sense to focus on the academic aspect of a language, but in general it's not where you should start when you're a complete beginner trying to learn a new language.
This is so true. I'm an English as a foreign language teacher and I tell my students that grammar is important but it's not all that people make it be. I try to make learning natural and fun and without pressure. Now I also have students that study with me to pass TOEFL or Cambridge and I tell them that since what I teach them is academic and to pass the exam and not exactly everyday English so that they clearly know that the exams are not a picture of real language used by common folk
Oriel Lindsey. I still remember the name of the professor who told me that. She told us what we needed to know for our exam; then we proceeded to learn English. As a matter of fact her approach made us feel like she was on our side. Sorry I'm rambling a bit lmao Best teacher I've ever had, and one of the best human being I met.
By watching your videos, I am learning English. Thanks. Summary: 0. Select the language you want to learn 1. Create a database of the most common and useful words of about 1000 2. Start talking early, preferably with native speakers 3. Make it fun, read books, listen to audio, watch movies in this language 4. Eventually you will have to learn the rules, but it will be much easier than if you first learned the rules and then started to learn the language
The Achilles Heel of all language learning instruction is that a native speaker never “learns the rules.” As a native speaker, you learn all of the details. The expression any rule is someone’s attempt (language teacher?) to quantify in a simple way the sum of all of the details that everyone already knows. Put simply, if you ever try to learn the rules of a language, you are doing it backwards.
This makes so much sense when you realise that this is exactly how people learn their mother tongue. You don't begin with the rules, you begin by learning how to communicate
Yup. You want food. You point to your mouth. You want to say hi, you smile and wave. Simple words like yes, no, want, more, up, down. Lettering one word just to get the message across. Then you learn a couple words at a time, like I want (or me want when you're first learning). Then words like please and thanks you. Before you know it, you're building sentences like "I want more" and "pick me up." Like you said, it's just communicating everyday things, not about detailed nuances.
yeah, to be fair though, on top of that, kids have been shown to basically be language sponges at a really young age, they can learn something like 3-4 languages or more simultaneously in the right environment, its basically just a case of bringing them up and using 2 or more languages interchangeably throughout their life and they just pick it up because the brain is so active and rewiring itself to understand everything at that point, where as an adult would probably have a fair amount of difficulty learning any more than 2 at a time, especially if they were pretty unrelated languages to each other.
@@ImKevan Actually, kids aren't that good at learning multiple languages. They are if you do it correctly. Speaking multiple languages simultaneously in the same environnement is going to confuse them and instead of knowing one language perfectly like other kids, they'll end up speaking multiple languages in a mediocre way. This situation happens if by "speaking multiple language simultaneously", you mean, for example, one parent switching from a language to another. For example : "My petite fille ? Can you take me le bol ? Merci darling." Another example "Ma petite fille ? Tu peux m'apporter le bol ? Merci, ma chérie" (I just repeated what I said before) and then the same parent says "Oh and btw, the cereals are there". In this situation, the child always has to make the effort to adapt to whatever language the parent will choose. It takes a lot of effort out of the brain and completely confuses it. Of course, the child is going to understand what I said before. However, they will understand it perfectly in the context of their family. When they will have to speak obky one language with their peers, it will be different. Children that come from multilingual family that do it that way actually have a harder time learning the language. Multilingual children are eventually going to have to communicate with other children that aren't. If the child cannot communicate without switching from one language to another, then s/he is going to be at a lesser level of communication than the other children. It doesn't matter that you can say a mediocre sentence in three languages if the other children can say the same sentence and do it more correctly and even do more complicated sentences in the language. If you mean one parent speaking in one language and the other parent speaking and ALWAYS speaking in another language, then yes, this can work. But that also means that parents will have to choose one language to speak with each other and not changing in front of the kids. The child NEEDS to be adressed in the SAME language by the SAME parent or in the SAME situation. Children need a strict environnment. One language for one environment. It's either "Daddy speaks Corean and Mommy speaks English" or "Daddy and Mommy speak Corean but we all speak English when we eat" or "Daddy and mommy speak Corean to each other but speak english to us". If you mix everything and switch languages on a daily basis, you're only going to confuse your child. So basically, you should focus on teaching your child how to communicate in the language of their peers first and not teach them multiple languages just for the sake of it.
@@petitesayo4542 Yeah I'm not saying it JUST happens, there's definitely a whole lot too it and its most certainly not as simple as I probably made it sound, and as far as I'm aware, its only been properly done and studied a few times, but the results do seem to show that kids have a far greater ability than we do at older ages to pickup languages.
@@suwapete9761 yeah that makes sense too I guess, and probably really should make more sense to me when I think about it, since I play guitar, I'm pretty good at it, better than most in fact, but a lot of that really just comes down to me really enjoying playing guitar and spending far grater amounts of my spare time practicing than most other people do, I did also have the benefit of starting really young too, but even now I still spend far more time just playing guitar than most people who consider playing guitar a hobby.
My Dad always used to say he was "fluid", not fluent when speaking German. The more beer he drank, the better the German sounded and the easier the conversation was. Being too worried about making errors when speaking means you're less likely to try.
I refer to my German as BarDeutsch, because I learned most of it in high school while not in the best state, often hungover, and when I took a summer exchange, I became fluent by going to the bar and speaking exclusively in German. I made people play pictionary with me to figure out what I was trying to say sometimes, all the while ordering in German. Listening to German radio and music, etc. I can see how this works with programming a game. You just need to start, throw yourself into the world.
As an Italian, I am actually impressed of how good you can speak Italian in so little time, I had zero problems understanding even the clip of six weeks in
Good analogy. I think it's more like if you were taught all of the theory behind the different scales and modes and all of the chords but never picked up a guitar.
@@misterscottintheway Agree, in my country English is a mendatory language to learn (as a second language). As someone who has never paid any attention in school but still learned English, I can say the way schools teach us is very inaffective. It took me just 3 years to learn English on the internet by having conversations with people and making friends in videos games who mostly only spoke English.
at my school we do get taught how to say sentences, its just sentences that we'd use maybe twice in our whole life? such as where we went on vacation, what the weather was like, where we live, what we live next to etc and i find it dumb
In my school, we had like 60% of each trimester being about grammar, conjugaison, vocabulary, the boring stuff. The remaining 40% however, and those represented 100% in exams sessions, were: oral expression, written expression, listening comprehension, reading comprehension. Where you actually had to work around actual, written/spoken english. Sure, you get penalties if you made grammar mistakes, but the most important part was about being confident and make a sensible text/speech (in expression), or understand the core ideas being the text/audio (in comprehension). It is also the same in universities. So my English is not perfect, once again, often do I make grammar or conjugaison mistakes, but I know how to communicate with people. It's also why many people say "I learned more about English online than in classes" because you learn how to communicate, even if it's poor. At first, only a few words for people to understand a direct order/info, then as time goes on you make more complicated sentences, and people will instinctively correct the most important mistakes you make, and as time goes on you can speak the language.
My man, would you care to share your work on your youtube channel or somewhere else? Im extremely interested, both in the results of your work, as well as your progress and resources. Video games are an incredibly valuable tool and im shocked they are not utilized more for learning purposes
@@MrMegaMetroid don't know about you, but I'm so interested in this that I'm subscribing to ewwitsantonio preemptively Very curious to see how they go about it
Why make a video game for language learning if you can learn a language just by playing a normal actual fun game and learn tons of vocab and words and ultimately learn the language through listening and reading a lot?
He didn't realize it, but that's actually the method everyone learns their language as kids. You first memorize words you hear your parents speaking, then you start trying to emulate them saying them yourself, and then you go to school and learn how it really works. :D As adults, we can do all that in less than 4-5 years, and that's why his method should work for anyone and everyone. :)
True. Immersion is key. That's why people that go to places where they don't speak the language would be able to naturally acquire the language even if they barely put in the effort in learning compared to someone that will meticulously study the language in their own place.
And this is exactly why native English speakers sometimes ask foreigners how to spell some words in their own language. Very surprising at first but actually makes sense. Granted, it's also because English spelling is a horrible mess: how do you pronounce "-ough"? (The Great Vowel Shift)
I teach English as a foreign language, and have studied Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian to varying levels ranging from full degree at university to functional holiday level, and here are some observations (apologies in advance for this self-indulgent essay): One of the misunderstood concepts in language learning is "being fluent" - some people think it means speaking "like a native"; for others (myself included) it means "being able to express what you want / need". I’ve taught people who are very fluent but make a load of small mistakes, and on the other hand I’ve taught people who can write an incredible essay and understand a complex text but struggle to express themselves in more spontaneous situations. I’m often asked "How long does it take to learn a language?", to which I answer: “What do you mean by LEARN?” "How long are you willing to study every day? How are you going to study? What are your aims? Do you want to go on holiday to an English-speaking country every summer or do you want to work in an English-speaking environment?” Speaking to yourself is a great way to get better, as that’s when you notice all the things you don’t actually know. You practice forming ideas in your head and expressing them out loud, which is what you need to be good at when speaking to an actual person. Never neglect listening skills - you can memorise all the phrases you want, if you can’t understand what someone says, it’s not worth that much. And always remember that not all speakers of a language are as good at grading their language as the Italki teacher in the video. Anyone who has ever asked for a train ticket in another language can vouch for that. Don’t pay too much attention to the internet polyglot community - they often pride themselves on being insanely good at languages above anything else. I’m ok at playing the guitar, but I don’t need John Frusciante or John Meyer to tell me I’m not as good as them - I just don’t need to be. Learning a language is a long and arduous journey, but the beautiful thing about it is you’re constantly learning, and being able to communicate with someone in another language is the best thing ever. It’s also like everything else in life, you get out of it what you put in. Once again, apologies for this rambling, I’ve just never felt the urge to post anything sensible on a TH-cam video until now.
I love your commentary. English is not my first language and I feel really insecure to write without the translator. Makes me happy to understand everything :)
I literally learned a lot of English when I was a kid, playing A Link To The Past, with a dictionary next to me, what a journey. Thanks for this video!
Something worth keeping in mind is that, in some places, if you can't speak the language "properly", the locals will just switch to English (Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, etc.) or pretend they don't understand you (France).
Native speakers of English are at a disadvantage here because people all over the world learn the language and many speak it amazingly well. Also most native English speakers have an immediately recognizable accent. If someone comes from a different country and claims not to know English, the natives of the countries you mentioned would have no choice but to speak to you in their language. I would claim to be from a different country but sadly my accent always gives me away.
That was what happened to me in Italy. I was there for a summer and really tried to learn some Italian, but every time I went into a shop and started to order something, the person I was talking to would always be like, "You know, I speak English, lol." And I was too shy to explain that I wanted to learn, so I just gave up and switched back to English.
@@Dachusblot I have to deal with this every fucking time in Los Angeles with everyone using me as their guinea pig 😩 it's soooo annoying!!! aaah lol I speak three languages and I want to practice more but this assholes won't let me haha
Just came here to recommend setting Animal Crossing New Horizons to your target language and starting a new file. There are so many random objects and various every day conversations. I learned so much Japanese vocabulary from that game alone.
oh yeah I did this with Stardew Valley and I think it's similar - basic simple conversations about day to day life and lots of words for groceries and everyday items. Some games are a bit more focussed on sci fi or fantasy objects/scenarios which is less useful
@@infamoussphere7228 As soon as I read the original comment say they changed their Animal Crossing language, I was like huh, maybe I should try changing my Stardew Valley language since I'm playing it a lot lately, so I'm glad to see your comment! Looks like I'll be changing my Stardew to Japanese next time I play :)
@@LendriMujina idk about AC but some games don't keep saves across accounts on the switch so if you add a second profile you might be able to have two islands on the go
The level of Italian he achieved in 4 months is impressive. However, I think he's underestimating just how much being fluent in Spanish helped him. Italian and Spanish are almost mutually understandable...
"I may be fluent in one romance language while spending 4-7 years intensely studying another, but somehow learning a third over 6 months wasn't that hard!"
I’m an ESL teacher with experience teaching learners in Uzbekistan and Jordan and a masters degree in Educatuon and innovation. What he’s talking about is called “communicative language learning” where your main goal is just communicating your ideas in the target language. Nowadays, communicative language teaching is becoming much more popular in the academic literature, but educational innovations are generally lagged by about a generation because the you need to wait until the university students who are learning these methods become teachers and start using them before you see results.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” - Nelson Mandela
I got super incredibly lucky with my French teacher in high school. She taught French immersion from day 1 of freshman year--starting with very basic French and working up to more complex language by the time I graduated. She had us speak back to her in French, as well as reading/writing exercises, but never any grammer or conjugation lessons (unless we asked). In only four years of her class I learned to speak and understand much of it. I'm not fluent and I make many mistakes, but I could go to France and have a decent conversation. One of the best teachers I've ever had!
@@mitchos9925 Name droping people on the internet isn't the greatest of thing^^' I get what Aly said, I just posted my experience about my german teacher, and I wouldn't give his name up either
i agree that this is the best way to learn, but it only works for students who WANT to study in my experience. i teach english as a second language, and a lot of the kids who are bad at english just dont listen to you or dont try to respond in english, so the method is lost on them. i dont blame them, despite doing this for my job i dont think everyone NEEDS english, nor should they. but all im saying is its a good tactic, but only works for those with some will to learn, or who are already good enough to work around the basics
Same! I graduated in 2020, but back in 7th grade, I took German, and that Jr. High (7-9) German teacher was so cool, and so much fun! He taught us about the culture, introducing new things to keep it exciting and fresh, but still teaching us new words, the sentence structures, and so forth. He was mostly talking to us in German, and followed up with English shortly after, speaking less English as the years went by. Unfortunately my high school (10-12) teachers were the opposite. 10th grade was fun, but was mostly history quizzes, with very little German speaking. 11th grade was a new lady, and she thought she was a cool teacher, but we would just sit around reading text books, “Correcting Astrid’s grammar!”. I dropped it my senior year. Aber ich liebe die Sprache! Auch jetzt noch!
I would agree that what you have is not fluency but the thing is, it's enough, and also, it can be a base for learning more, it's way easier to learn more of the language when you can understand it well, so you can watch movies, youtube, talk with people, etc. In my opnion, this isn't "the new way to learn languages" it's the "new first step to learn languages".
I totally agree. When you think about, learning a language firstly with the focus of just being able to communicate without worrying about making grammar mistakes is the most natural approach. This is how babies learn, and to me, it seems also to be the most intuitive and effective approach. You first want to have a general knowledge of the language, that means, knowing a significant amount of vocabulary and having just a brief general idea about how grammar works. You might make a lot of mistakes, but at least you understand most conversations and are already able to communicate. And it's there then, after having reached a certain amount of general understanding of the language, that you start focusing on the details and strive for "perfect" grammar, spelling and all that stuff. It's so unnecessary, in the first stages of learning, to focus so heavily on knowing a random grammar topic perfectly like conditionals when your overall understanding of the language doesn't depend on that.
I learned English first and grammar second. English is my only language. Learning a language first and grammar from being corrected or reading, or listening or watching is normal. It's like playing a sport. You learn to play the sport before you learn all the skills, rules, and stuff because sitting and learning the rules and skills from a book would fucking suck. I play soccer in a beer league and we all have to remind each other of the rules because we all haven't played in 10 years
It can become an issue if you don't have enough words to talk about things, but honestly, there is too much stake put on grammar in the first few weeks of learning.
Ironically...saying "not terribly skilled' means "skilled" - a poorly timed double negative for this example. I'm sure this makes more sense if you speak the Queen's English.
i really don't care if someone isn't completely fluent in english, because most people that speak to me and english isn't their first language at least know the basics, which i respect. i'm currently learning german, and i hope that when i attempt to speak to them, they understand what i mean, even it's the most basic of phrases
one of my main reasons for learning italian is to better understand the cuisine. so I integrated loads of niche culinary terms into my practice because that's the version of the language I want to learn
Yes, and the best part is most native speakers don't know the rules anymore. I've seen this with French and English people, they don't know the rules, they just apply them without even thinking about it at all
Not fully related to what you said, but did you know that babies and adults learn languages at different rates? When I first started researching language learning methods, I was sure that babies were better and faster at learning languages than adults, but apparently that’s not the case. Having knowledge about general language usage, the ability to use translations and more complex studying techniques actually allows adults to learn languages much faster than babies. Despite that, adults can also use the same method that babies use to learn languages to fluency, but it can be quite frustrating of a process if you don’t know how to do it right. I think it’s called the naturalistic method of language learning, and some polyglots swear by it. Within my own language studies, I’ve found that it’s easier to learn grammar by studying it than by simply trying to learn it from context, but you can definitely learn a lot of it through context if you know enough words. The thing is, it’s kind of useless to learn grammar that you don’t have an active use case for. It’s frustrating, confusing, and you’ll forget how to use it because you aren’t using it. I’ve found it’s better to study only the grammar that’s relevant to what you want to express at that point in your journey. I’ve found that it makes you less critical of your own mistakes and more likely to not care if you are saying things correctly because the point is you don’t bother with something until it actively limits your ability to communicate, and you are forced to learn how to be the most expressive with what you already know.
@@konchaku It is that point of trying to make links, till it just clicks. Like that great English to German video, by the end of it, you can understand what is said and know the answers. But ask them 30mins after most draw a blank.
But a baby will speak their first words after one or two years of all day exposure to the language. We cant learn like that as adults, firstly because we are not learning our native language rather a language we DON'T hear every day, or even at all. I agree grammar is not the most important in the beginning but if you wanna be fluent you have memorize the grammar. Its useless to learn vocabulary if you don't know the verbs to be and to have at least. And that means memorizing it.
When I was learning a language a long time ago, I used a mix of yours and the conventional method. I bought a textbook that explained all the basic grammar rules and I used that as a base to practise the non-conventional way mostly by talking to as many natives as I could. Thinking of trying to learn a new language again, but I'm not sure yet which one i'd want to learn.
I'd just start with one of the "main" languages, like Spanish or French or maybe even some others like German or polish. If you want a challenge, go for Japanese.
@@michaelhunt9717 are you saying japanese isnt recomended as a first second language? even if i have the ability to talk with a native speaker daily through work? genuine question lol
@@rainedrop14 Yeah I don't recommend Japanese as your first second language. Not saying there's anything wrong with doing so, it's your life. If you have an easy time with it, then by all means, go ahead.
@@michaelhunt9717 Interesting how to you Spanish and French are "main" languages but not Mandarin and Hindi which are both higher on the list of most spoken languages. Or do you just use "main" synonymously with "European"?
@@ਮਨਪ੍ਰੀਤ-ਪ1ਚ I think by main they mean that English speakers often learn these ones first as there is a smaller jump between English and Spanish than English and Hindi or Mandarin
You should watch the ecolenguist video: th-cam.com/video/VCtg1upDmWs/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=Ecolinguist I had entire conversations with italians in spanish back in Italy.
Yes that makes the whole video a bit useless... Speaking two romance languages is making it so much easier to learn a third... Ofc it took less time if you more or less know the grammar and the vocabulary
I am really thinking of learning Spanish, and Italian at the same time. But I am not sure if I learned Spanish would I be able to understand Italian too. And now I know that u understand 50% so I am glad I will start with Spanish.
Something really important that he didn't mention (or rather he just skimmed over it) is that you NEED to immerse yourself in the language you're learning. This makes the process of learning grammar and pronunciation so much more intuitive. Watch YT videos in french, watch german movies, listen to italian music, play your games in spanish. After hearing and reading so much of your language of choice, the right way to say and write things will just become intuition. Me and many friends that know how to speak english properly, have never studied a single grammar rule in our lives, and yet we can write and talk perfectly fine because "it sounds right". Immerse yourself in the language, then everything becomes a learning opportunity
I agree and at the same time disagree with you (a little, but still). I agree that you need to immerse yourself- watch movies/YT, read articles/books, play games in the "chosen" language, but most importantly "try it" - speak, write, especially if you don't feel confident at it and are afraid of using it. However I think that you need a little knowledge of grammar- not saying that knowing all the rules, tenses etc. will be the only condition to speak, (and for sure all of them are not needed in everyday communication) , but in some situation can be helpful. And unfortunately, in some languages without knowing basic (main) rules, it will be extremally difficult to progress and speak "fluent".
Indeed. There's a reason English is the most spoken second language. That's just simply because of our pop culture. Most people grow up watching American movies and listening to American music.
@@Sophie1763 yeah, learning a little grammar at an intermediate level is extremely helpful in progressing the language faster. Of course, one could do without but it does save time in figuring out the whys in the language
I learned English through videogames and tv as a kid. Meanwhile I did not retain any of the foreign languages that were taught to me in school.. Did a test when I was 18 and my score was literally flawless. University level English in all categories. Mostly thanks to Pokémon and Friends lol
Completely true. While my friends loved to play videogames in Spanish, our native language, I did it in English. I also watched movies/series in English until I started to do it without subtitles. And I only did it that way because I like it. It was subconscious. I was having fun and learning at the same time. I make mistakes, sure. Lots of them. But I am more or less fluent. Now I even read novels in English. And people around me were surprised. I never talked regularly with an English speaker, so I lack a lot of practice in that painful area, but I agree with your video.
A man once said: "Over the next 2 years, I'm going to learn a new language." "That is a very long time.." his friend responded, to which he replied: "2 years are going to pass, whether I learn the language or not."
@Whatever Its enough to learn a language, you can do it in even less. Depends on how much time you put into it. Speaking it fluently will only happen if you live in X country and surround yourself with it for years (and want to learn it).
What you said about the accuracy of language, and that language is not math, is very important. I am fluent in German and I make many mistakes, but, if I speak in a confident way, no one cares about the mistakes I make. I think the most important step to learning a foreign language is getting over the pressure that everything you say has to sound perfect in the beginning.
I actually remember watching a TED talk about exactly that! The presenter was talking about how the people who do best at learning new languages are the people who don't care about making mistakes and engage in conversation even at low levels of understanding.
Yeah, I know so many people who are scared to talk. But in my experience people just want to communicate and are generally just happy you're putting in the effort.
Well let's be honest. He said he speaks Spanish fluently due to his mission in Mexico. I learned Spanish over the last 10 or so years and am very fluent as well. Switching over to Italian was almost as if I had like 60 percent of this new language under my belt. Both being Latin languages gave me a massive head start in my Italian journey.
was thinking this exact thing. I'm trying to learn Japanese from English. Never learnt another language before, and i feel so unbelievably overwhelmed. Having fluency in a language that is similar in some ways would make the process so much smoother and easier.
I'm an English teacher in Japan going on 20 years and I'm totally with you on this. I really wish more teachers and students understood this fundamental aspect of the language journey... Nice way to lay it all out, by the way! Fun too!
@@bodbyss I know the question wasn’t meant for me but you should learn Hiragana and Katakana at the same time as you learn vocabulary. I did it that way
I love how Duolingo saw this video and made an update that completely goes in the opposite direction. They actually used to do it the way you propose and then changed it into the variant you describe as bad
@@klodno6164 Before, the units were more freely structured. If you wanted to learn something in the category travel next, but not necessarily food yet, you were able to choose between the two, or even more. This is like the free choice of topic on diverging paths, described in the video. Now duolingo is completely linear. Each piece of a unit has to be done before you can start the next one and the order of topics is rigid. Wanna do travel next? too bad, you don't even see that travel would be next because you have to do food, now!
What he's saying is actually pretty funny, because that's exactly the way how I learned French, and believe me, it works faster than other methods, I would only recommend listening to a lot of the language before starting to learn the most basic words, this way your brain is gonna be a little bit more adapted to the sounds, and your pronunciation will come out naturally
well until now, I have been living french-speaking city for around 8 months without any french background and surviving with English (my native is Uralic lang). I am gonna test if help or not for the future learning journey
@@h.ar.2937 I really really don't wanna be the "those people" which Harris mentions in the video but... He forgot to mention another one of the major language learning views which has especially been growing in popularity online in these last several years, and which has existed for much longer: The Input Method. It's based off of the hypothesis that humans (for instance, as babies) learn language best through exposure in context, (which has been proven time and time again to be true, I myself can evidence it) because our brains are insanely good at recognizing patterns, and the ways to stimulate that progress are often quite unintuitive. The main activities we do are: 1. SRS systems for basic vocab (just like Harris and Nathan's method) 2. Massive amounts of audio immersion followed by focusing more on meaning (Absolutely the crux of it) 3. Exercising outputting abilities using intuition developed from immersion. (NOTE: Immersion doesn't really have anything to do with "moving to the country" or "talking to natives". With the power of the internet, there's written, audio, and video content of all forms available, and in more widely-spoken language, in all topics!) The main difference from the method outlined in the vid is emphasis on **not** speaking early (though whether "early ouput is a "sin" or not depends on who you ask; I disagree, personally). f you want a lot more depth "Day of French n' Swedish" and "Matt v Japan" should be your **first stops**. I promise it's worth it. ^^ Whether or not you're specifically interested in Japanese, "Cure Dolly's Organic Japanese" is also a great source) (and the site Matt worked on refold.la/ is a god-send, it can basically serve as an input learner's Bible lol) I hope these sources can help some comment-scrollers on their journey with languages, and I apologize if it was way too long, hehe...
@@atahirince I can assure it's a great idea. Start with some basic vocab like in the vid above, and then start consuming content of any form you like! At first you won't catch a lot, but if you keep building vocab, and recognizing it in context, your brain begins to pick apart patterns.
@@yournamehereyournamehere907 true as hell, I was gonna say, school's role is almost to pretend to be learning skills while all the while it suppresses them.
The thing is... this is how we all learn our first language. We learn the key words, we start communicating early, and only after those basic building blocks are set do we start to really refine grammar. It's the way the brain makes sense of language in general.
That's a really good point. It's really common sense but a ton gawk at it and thus confuse a lot of people who then don't know how to approach it. This is a really good point that we gotta remember.
Most people don't even "learn" the grammar really, in the sense that school teaches it, they just get the intuitive sense of how it works, because that's all one needs to communicate
@@ulti-mantis this is really common in languages with complex grammar. As an Italian (our language has a lot of rules, expecially with verbal forms) a lot of native peoples do make mistakes daily when speaking or writing.
But it also took us what 15 years or so to actually be able to speak the language like an adult. Plus we all had our first language for at least 10 years in school.
Fluency: "Hello, good sir, excuse me, Would you perhaps be so kind as to tell me, where I could find the nearest grocery store, if it is not too much of a bother." communication: "food store, where?"
@@nyankers Very true. I think no japanese person would say something like that:"ごめんなさい、 ごはんやさん は どこ に ありますか。" but it should be grammatically correct. But I don't understand japanese politeness levels at all, so I could be completely wrong about that xD
@@GGysar ごめんなさい is more of an apology than an interjection. I would say すみません…スーパーはどこですか？ The most common word for store would be sūpā which is short for supermarket, or if you wanted to be specific you could say 食料品店 (しょくりょうひんてん) which means food store. And yes there are many levels of polite speach in Japanese, but most people only need to learn Casaul and simple polite form, "Desu/masu".
As an Italian I'll just say this: You're doing GREAT, and your videogame map theory is truly inspiring :) Thanks for posting this! Speriamo di averti presto in Italia :)
When you travels, locals LOVES when a foreigner tries to speak the language even if it is bad. That's how you get invited to places or get recommended nice spots.
I totally agree with you! I love it when a foreigner tries to speak my own language and I try continue the conversation in that language that way he/she can practice. Same holds when I travel, I love it when I meet locals speaking to me in their language and not switching directly to English.
Keep yo blanket statement, I didn't take french for four years just so Saisons Margaruite could waltz up to my reception and expect me to handle a check in on a "take, huur mar du" alone. If she wants a dinner recommendation she can take her independent ass and grab a map cuz shes not getting one from me with that attitude.
For anyone learning a Germanic language, one thing I found extremely helpful was learning the history of how languages started splitting, and how some words are related to English but just separated paths. Just learning some bits of history can get you quite a bit further than listening to a teacher explain to you what mood participles are and what not.
Lingustics and their history are so fascinating. I primarily want to learn German, due to family, but I also look at the other Germanic or Latin/Romance language histories (for example, Old Norse to the successor languages of today). Hell, even taking a look at Old English really puts into perspective how much English has changed in a millennium!
Do you think that for a english learner that work once we have some kind knowledge about the english language? Because my native language is not Germanic, and when I did start to learn french, I think that I would connect my skills in english to help me, but in french I found much more similarities with my native language at first.
I love this method, it’s actually kind of similar to how children start learning English for example. Majority of the time kids aren’t learning the grammar and the spelling at home, they are just learning how to convey ideas in a basic way. When kids go to school is when they start learning grammar and the right spelling etc. (at least that’s how it was for me)
You are spot on with this observation. Kids learn the basic words, object names, action names and start mashing them together. The grammar and spelling get slowing developed over many years, but the conversational part like Johnny is talking about, comes quickly and we can all understand the little ones when they talk, correct or not. Look I made a run on sentence, who cares, you understood it. Peace.
English is my third language. I never properly learned any grammar in English, I only mimicked things I read and heard. while rarely looking up a few things that weren't clear just from their usage when I had the energy.
I currently live in Korea and have used your alternate method to speak Korean, and it works well. I can make basic conversation, buy food and drink, fond shelter, buy clothing, get transportation, etc. My Korean is very basic but I get by very well. I can even tell different Korean accents apart. I feel that no matter where in Korea I am I'll be okay. I have used this same method while living in Germany, I learned the very basic words, some rudimentary grammar, and went about my way speaking dirty German. After three years living there my German was fairly good.
i was wondering about korean specifically while watching this! i took a few years in college, but could never speak it to anyone bc i think my brain had a wall up (maybe i’m just lazy)… was it hard to implement this with the different characters or was it just an extra first step?
@@tinymeatbean you mean the Korean alphabet? I think it is the easiest thing to learn in Korean, and didn't slow down learning at all. I think the grammar, which seems backwards to an English speaker, is the hardest aspect of learning Korean, plus the huge vocabulary.
I am a translator and I think that as long as people understand you, YOU ARE FLUENT! The concept of language is to transmit ideas. You don't have to cite poems or whatsoever. Even though I can't take that easier approach for my profession (for obvious reasons) I think there's no right way to learn languages and that's what's beautiful about it.
Translator and interpreter do have additional duty of conveying the accurate meaning and tone. Deep understanding of culture is immensely important, when ambiguous meaning, colloquialism get involved. Accurate pronunciation (can be hard depending on your first language). I guess all locals appreciate learners who won't corrupt their language, also in real-life we don't have luxury of training to full proficiency before using the language. Just keep improving. :-)
I had a similar experience when I traveled to France. Since then, I have studied on my own even more, but I haven't made the progress with communication like many other language learners. I think I'm so anxious about getting everything right that I overwhelm myself. I will try your approach. Thanks so much for explaining it in such an interesting way!
Wait wait wait. So you're saying, the most efficient way to learn new language is not through books but through how we learn language as a toddler? That's actually good. I'll do this soon.
you choose the way it works well for you . some people need books , others cards , others videogames and some others even miniatures, etc . we do not feel or think in the same way . if you feel like asking someone to teach you is fine too , there is no invalid way to teach or learn a language , only the elitist educational systems dictates what is wrong or right when it comes down to learning and teaching and they make people believe this .
Well, not exactly... it takes us years to acquire a language as kids. What he presented was scientifically broken down process of how kids learn a language. First they learn the most basic words and use them very, very incorrectly. But they can convey ideas. Then kids learn grammar by seeing patterns in everyday speech. What was done here was taken the most popular words (so a shortcut to what happens with kids), and then learning grammar through rules which is more efficient than learning it from patterns over thousands of examples. This is a brilliant strategy (and I mean from linguistic point of view - it was my major), although in his case it is necessary to mention that knowing a language as closely related as Spanish is to Italian was a tremendous help. Trust me, that would not have happened with a language from a different language group, like Finnish or Chinese.
@@ankyfire IT IS the toddler way as far you can able to do, of course its not perfect and not as pure like toddler If you want the toddler way, simply jump to that new place and learn directly with the native, not only you picking lot of word quickly but you also learn the structure and grammar by experience it directly Here in Indonesia (2nd most multilanguages, over 600 language) we in different region speak with slightly different dialect to completly different language, and i see lot of people moving around and settle, and after few month they can speak just like the locals
I took French for 12 years in elementary and high school, couldn’t speak or understand it, always just barely passed the class but I wanted to speak it. After high school I lived in Quebec for 3 months and volunteered at a day care and suddenly I could speak french.
High School French Teacher here. Fluency is not memorizing grammar rules, it is internalizing them and having the ability to retrieve them when you need to. What you did is an excellent demonstration of why no one remembers the language they studied in high school. I majored in French but when I moved to France I didn’t know how to call the fire department!
It is tough for Americans because we live in a sea of English. My wife grew up in Italy and spent a month every year in France, so she speaks French well. Then she went to live in London, so she speaks English well. I took a year of high school Spanish, and then I started learning Italian at 40. I use my Italian daily but still suck. I can't imagine putting in huge effort for a a vacation. BTW, even when I'm in Italy, the Italians all want to speak English with me. ;)
The problem is that you *need* a reason to know the language. Chances are, if you’re just picking up a language for fun (or school) and not using it in real life on a regular basis. This is why so few Americans don’t know a second language. We don’t need to. Since 1815, an English speaking country has been the dominant world power. This makes everyone else learn English, so no matter where Americans go, people know English.
You still need to know some basic for that language, or else it is like you start the game naked,no money, no ability to walk, no ability to crawl. That's painful. People oftenly forget that we just have spent a painfully amont of time in our Childhood to say the first few words in our mother tongue(The pain is not yours but most likely who ever raised you). So Studying grammar help you take shortcut years of your life. But I wholeheartly agree that living in a Native speaking community will accelerate the learning curve. And most importantly, sometime it easier if you already know and have familarity with the concepts used in that language, which could be much harder if the language come from a very different language groups
After years of flashcards and textbooks, I used Pimsleur. It does exactly what you're talking about. It starts making you have conversations without ever telling you to go learn grammar or vocabulary. You kind of just think about the language as a series of phrases rather than trying to have a perfect understanding of how it functions... which I think is more similar to how we understand our own native language.
I think his point wasn't that he literally couldn't order a baguette. After all, literally going and saying "baguette" would probably be enough. I think the point was to say that even with a minor in French, the simple task of ordering food was daunting and something he was not comfortable with
It's more that feeling of "the first time you walk into the store". Try to remember what it was like being 6 years old and trying to buy a candy bar: Should you say "hey mister" or "Excuse me" or just stand in front of the register and hope to be noticed?
Not if your threshold is set by academic fluency, in which case you would not accept a grammatically incorrect and poorly pronounced sentence. I think the main takeaway is that you need to accept you will never pass for a native speaker (not unless you move there or otherwise live and breathe the language), so it's fine to make mistakes. Then the question becomes: what's an acceptable level of mistakes, and there the answer can vary, but his threshold is that people can understand what he is trying to say. He also addresses the other big question, i.e. what you are intending to express. If you are a tourist, you can literally make do with a few dozen phrases and a small booklet with perhaps 100 more, and get around easily and safely. Here he chose to set a very high threshold in trying to be conversational. No specialised fields, no legalese, no political subtlety but still, an expansive field. People may object that being conversational is still not enough, and that you need to be able to read and understand the standard-bearing newspapers and newscasts, or even the main literary works. I would argue that by that standard, most people aren't fluent in their native tongue.
Just say "Bonjour ! Un tradition pas trop cuite, s'il vous plaît" if you like your baguette not too cooked/brown; or "Bonjour ! Un tradition bien cuite, s'il vous plaît" if you like it quite browned up. Then, 100% of the time, you'll be asked "Et avec ceci ?", to which you answer "Ce sera tout, merci". And then you pay. I swear the number of times my whole verbal exchange at a bakery happened like that, regardless of which bakery in France, is truly impressive. This exchange is so stereotypical it should be French 101.
Good news, some schools have already caught on to this. I took two years of German in highschool, and I never did a worksheet or had any homework. The class revolved around us speaking and listening. I haven't tried to speak German in years, but I still remember a lot of the rules. The rules were not explicitly taught to me, I know them because the sentence just sounds right.
I'm learning German with the rules, but I only remember the rules long enough to commit the idea to my brain. I know noun gender is a thing, but I only remember the gender of a given noun by trying out which one sounds correct. Same with verb conjugation. I can get away with this in German because it's pretty simple (by comparison, I have taken Latin. Not even native Latin speakers could speak Latin without memorising declension charts.)
it's so weird to say "it sounds right" because of not being fluent, but it's just a feeling? like when i speak japanese or korean and use particles, i just *know* or *feel* when something is right. schools can't really ever teach this
Similar for me with my Latin class. I’m currently a junior in high school, and am taking a Latin class. We definitely go over grammatical stuff, but my teacher has never really expected us to memorize. He really just wants us to understand what he’s saying and memorize the words.
I'm italian and his italian without being in italy and learning that in 4 months, is very good. Americans just chill out, grammar is not important to talk to people. The point of communication is communicating, not to know everything. Good for you for learning italian. Dovresti visitare il lago di garda, non sarai deluso.
agreed!! i never learned Korean but I watched a lot of Korean dramas and Korean Variety shows. i never knew or learned the grammar and other standard stuffs but when I speak with Koreans they told me that my Korean is natural and the wording usage is native sounding to them. I may not know a lot of formal stuffs but conversation is the only thing that matter!
Harold II Jamiro I can not for the life of me remember the name but it is on steam for like $15 if I can I’ll reply here but it’s literally like you learn magic with learning vocabulary in a new language
This new way seems like how children learn. Kids talk way before "learning how to" in school. Then once the foundation is set the palace of language may be built.
Exactly, lol. People saying “but you need to know past conditional tense!!!!!! U can’t be fluent!!” Are big fat liars. As someone of mixed race, bilingual, learning to speak first was INCREDIBLE for my growth in learning everything ese.
This is one of the most inspiring videos I've ever seen. I'm engaged to a girl from Czech Republic and for a while I've been a little hopeless about how long it might take to learn Czech. Then I watched this and immediately felt like I can start making active choices *today.*
I always thought that learning czech has got to be a nightmare for a foreigner who does it the conventional way (I mean it is confusing af even for us natives), so choosing a more natural approach like this seems reasonable and will help you a lot. Should you try to learn some formal grammar though, I recommend getting some older, more structured book from like the 90s and older (not extremely old, because of some possible archaic language that'd be confusing, but you get the point) - the reason for it is that they have less useless crap and go straight to the point, mechanically yes, but useful when you just want to check how you get from A to B. But overall, by sticking to the principles in this vid, you've set yourself up for success already. Best of luck.
I think the idea of the video game map method is to set language goals for yourself and to not be afraid to let the goals change. You may set out to defeat the fluency boss, but along the way there may be an interesting excursion. When that shows up on your radar, you can ignore it or you can explore it. Exploring that may lead you to explore something else, and by the time it is done, the most impactful thing was not the main storyline, but the terrific and difficult sidequests along the way.
I dropped out of Spanish class in college twice. Now a beautiful Latina woman is my partner of over a year. I've wanted to give learning her language another shot because I've struggled to communicate with her parents, but I didn't know how to approach it because I previously struggled so much with it and felt embarrassed to even try. I'm going to try to learn with this method and report back.
It's a good method in theory but Johnny gets a MASSIVE advantage because he already speaks fluent spanish and learned French, even if it was just unusable theory. Learning a language from the same language group makes things much easier.
@@justas423 It's a good method in practice too, but it's lacking a very important part: you're supposed to do all this along with the regular classes, this helps you and gives you an advantage when dealing with the actual tests and exams. Take it from me, I learnt English 80% through videogames as a native Spanish speaker.
Paciencia y dedicación amigo. Eso y convertir tu vida al español. Tu computador, celular, videos de TH-cam, canciones, películas... Get used to hear and think in the language that you want to learn.
I actually learned English through music, videogames and tv shows. Trying to pick up japanese as an adult has been really hard due to fear of failure, I'm always scared of messing up grammar, Kanji interpretations. It's scary af but I'm trying my best
broskie, being fluent in another language, especially SPANISH, when learning ITALIAN (i mean come on lol) is a pretty big gain over someone who only speaks, say, english
@@caracaes they're very similar, as of almost every neolatin language! When I went to Spain in 2017, I just used to talk in a mixture of italian, neapolitan and hand-gesture (hey, I'm still italian, can't speak without using my hands!) and it went perfectly
@@caracaes Passively, fully agreed. Actively ... could you describe what you do for a living in Italian, or why you broke up with your first girllfriend?
@@amicaaranearum yes, it's easier if the languages are related in the way all neolatin ones are(Portuguese, Spanish, Italian) or germanic ones (English, German, Dutch).
I'm Norwegian, and when I was a child, I didn't know English at all. The internet for me was hard to use, I mostly ended up searching for Lego videos on youtube looking for stop motion (They were cool, don't @ me). But I didn't understand what people were saying or writing, and so, a lot of the things I cared about was either hard or impossible to find, let alone understand. School didn't really teach me English all that well, and so, the people in my family decided to teach me, because they thought it would be useful for me to learn... And that they could do a better job than my teachers. And this video pretty much sums up how I learnt English. It was never about grammar, verbs, adjectives etc etc, nor was it really ever about whether or not I could spell words... JUST that when I heard the word, I knew what it meant. And that I could say them, and write something that was close. And the words I was taught were directly related to the things I would do, the things around me and the things I was interested in. You wouldn't teach Quantum Physics to a 1st grader, so why teach words that are 100% unrelated to someone? Initially, I would try to remember the words by remembering the Norwegian equivalent, but as time passed, I stopped translating things in my head and instead learnt by associating the words themselves with items or concepts... Which is... What I DO in Norwegian... That's how language works. Although my English was garbage, I could at the very least be understood, and I could understand others... Isn't that the point of Language in the first place? To communicate? There is no doubt in my mind that I've spelled things wrong in my comment, or that my grammar can be off... But that's fine. There are grammatical rules in Norwegian that I didn't learn through sitting down at a desk and writing them down over and over again to pass a test. At that point, I'm learning to pass the test more than the thing I'm actually writing. A small example: In Norwegian, we have "en, ei, et" for "one" (or "the" in some situations I suppose). And you pick the correct one based on... I have no clue what it's based on, I think it's related to the "gender" of the topic/object? Anyway, 90-99% of the time, I pick the right one, without knowing the rules for which one to use. I "just know" which to use... As my brain has subconsciously learnt the rule... Or what sounds best, I have no idea what my brain does half the time. And I probably do the same with English. To this day, I don't know what an adjective is. Nor do I know what syllables, nouns or adverbs are... I don't need to know them in my everyday life. And I didn't need them to learn English. I'm not saying they are useless or that you shouldn't learn them - but they aren't always required to learn a language. Learning the most commonly used words and then going from there really is the best way to go, at least it was for me... And I suspect this is the case for most people. As far as I know and have seen, this is pretty much how babies learn their first language anyway. From there, just get used to the language.
Hey! This was super inspiring! I can relate to this so much, speaking English as my second language. 100% agree with what u said about associating the English word for the actual object/idea/concept itself rather than associating the English word with the equivalent word in my mother tongue. Love your comment, you sum up my experience of getting to fluent in English so perfectly. Thank you so much 🙂 Hope you progress even further and enjoy learning languages and everything else around you more and more! 😁
HI! ok, so I just wanted to say that I applaud you! I've lived in an English speaking household all of my life took Spanish for four years from middle school to high school, and I barely tapped that place where you stop translating, but then eventually stopped because I wasn't passionate, hated my teacher, and knew that there was no way I was going to pursue language in college. I do the same thing that you do with the "just know" the correct term for what you want to portray to make sense. Oh btw I turn 20 in a month and have spoken English since I was a kid and still can barely tell you what a noun is, and syllables or adjectives are my best bet. I went to one of the best high schools in my region. don't worry about not knowing the big fancy words, you never need to explain what a verb is (unless you enjoy mad libs) and most English speakers don't know it either. If you hadn't told m that you "aren't fluent" by school standards I never would have guessed, most of us speak with words we learned in third grade. Nice job on that front! (btw I'm sure this is rambling on a lot so sorry about that)
I learned English with that game: Legend of Zelda and with Secret of Mana. Before, games were not translated to Spanish, so I had a dictionary next to me to understand what I was supposed to look for in the game.
I used FF VII, tatics and Digimon world 1, 2 and 3 I was 6 and my parents would make questions of the game lore, so i had to have it written in portuguese and english. It felt horrible and games were not that fun, but nowdays i'm so grateful
this is a fascinating video. I'm into constructed languages and I spend a lot of time wondering how to actually build a new language's grammar from scratch. the 'basic english" method might just help in this goal.
I teach Italian and it actually made me smile how you mentioned “double object pronouns”, “subjunctive” “irregulars” and “past participles” - definitely among the things my students like the least!😂 That’s a great strategy indeed, and definitely more of a fun one! :) (Another great tip when it comes to learning a language from 0 is watching cartoons, you learn basic structures and everyday vocabulary. It has helped me a lot in language learning! )
@Whatever don’t worry, used to that 😉 thankfully not all Italians are like that! Anyways you probably haven’t heard some of our politicians speaking in English...that’s where they need the most help I’d say haha
Totally agree with the watching cartoons/dubbed anime. Me and my sister learned German that way when we were kids, before school. It was our secret language no one in the family understood.
I see, you're a man of culture as well. And the world where you will have the most luck is the Japan shrine. During CET nights it tends to be full of Russians, and you will likely find Soviet Pingu parades.
This is so smart! When you think of how toddlers learn language, it's similar to this. They learn the words and how to say them, they use them with their parents, THEN they go to school.
This video is almost exactly the same as Nathaniel’s just with a videogame metaphor. Right down to the, “I already speak multiple Romance languages but that’s not the point here.” And the problem I have with it is that beginners don’t know how to parse bad word lists, of which many are. For example, trying to learn all the particles in German... they are ALWAYS on those lists and have multiple meanings depending on context, so it’s useless to try to learn those in a strictly memorization manner. But beginners might not realize that. Learn the most common nouns and verbs, then fill in the other words as you go.
Yea, that's a good disclaimer to add. When I was learning Korean, there are 3/4 types of ways to say something based on politeness and closeness to a person. I could only handle learning the mid-level structure, that is most applicable to all different types of people or situations, but if I hadn't been told that I might've wasted much more time with learning unnecessary ways to say something. So yea, nouns and verbs are definitely the better place to start, then you can add the more functional details as you start to gain more understanding about the structure and grammar.
I think his strategy works well with Chinese. Since Chinese doesn't have the same tense-based system as Western languages, the 1000 words hill is easier to climb and forces you into conversations with natives. Phrases are the only way I've learned grammar because most people, outside of school, can't explain, only the teachers. I was lucky to start my journey with Chinese in a community that speaks it so maybe my observation is flawed. I agree that western languages would have issues with word lists. If a language has set words, that aren't altered, and aren't heavily influenced by grammar, then his system works. However, I'm a bigger fan of phrase and sentence memorization. You can often place other words you learn later into these memorized phrases and hope you get the point across.
For many european languages, especially the most spoken and the most important ones, there are lots of online resources to help navigate through the most important words. Besides, the easiest way to learn a new language is probably just consuming entertainment, like youtube or netflix, where there is the possibility to set the language of subtitles. An example for German might be the original german videos of Kurzgesagt, but based on your interest you are very likely to find your preferred channels. Doing it this way you automatically will get to know most of the most important words of the language, plus you will also immediately focus on your interests, which might spark further curiosity and a more solid knowledge down the line. A lot of friends and relatives of mine learned english this way and it is way more efficient and less tiresome
@@KidGibson Only issue with sinitic languages is filtering out the redundant western words. a, an, one, he, him, she, her, they, his, hers, theirs... my thousand word list is down to 650 already help!
Hi! I'm an opera singer. To do my job, I had to learn a whole lot about a variety of different languages. Opera singers are essentially professional language learners, and it's one of my favourite things about my job! Learning operas, you obviously memorize quite a bit of vocabulary without learning any grammar rules or sentence structure - it's just words as they were written down in the original repertoire. But the vocabulary in those operas is also usually archaic, and learning Italian from things like Mozart operas is a little like trying to learn English by reading Shakespeare plays. All this to say, in opera, we have to learn functional language separately from our academic knowledge. While I have a lot of Italian words memorized due to the operas in Italian I've sung, I absolutely could not order food at a café or understand a native speaker if they spoke to me. For a lot of singers I know, formal coursework doesn't work for exactly the reason you point out: the courses are structured linearly from a specific starting point, and even if you do get to the end, singers often don't have much better use of the language than they would if they've just memorized fifty new operas in that language. What I'm getting at, essentially, is that I've recently come to the exact same conclusion you, Nathaniel, and the US Government in the 40s all came to: that the generally accepted model for ways to learn a language is flawed, and we're all best off distilling languages into their most common, usable, functional words if we want to connect with people. Making mistakes is okay. Mistakes are fine. Having the ability to really communicate, person to person... that's what vital. And it's the most exciting thing about language learning.
One way to "make it fun" is to watch a film in the language you're trying to learn with the English subtitles on. It's not always a word-for-word translation, but it really does help. You also learn delivery and context of common phrases, slang and jargon by seeing it spoken in a film.
Agree. All I learned about English came through watching movies and TV shows. Sometimes I'm not sure How to express exactly what I'm thinking, but I'll most likely understand what people are saying!
You learn grammar naturally as a kid too. The grammar you learn in school is just a standardized/formal grammar, but every child knows how to speak correctly and grammatically. Native speakers by definition cannot speak incorrectly barring some kind of brain disease like Aphasia, etc. Source: I was a Linguistics Major in College
You basicly go to school to learn that you already know the gramar but you don't know why you know it - so they teach you all that again with unneded teory
That’s very true. Kids learn basic grammar through cartoons, simple books that are read to them etc (that’s how they learn to conjugate simple verbs), but they mainly focus on vocabulary. Only once they go to school they start learning the grammar.
@@FrancescaDePaolis with my language (Croatian) you need the gramar for even basic conversation - so the majority of our language lessons were focused on recognising various rules that are used and pointing them out
This is really encouraging for us who are in the process! I was in Japan a few years ago to visit my husband’s relatives and it was a week full of charades, smiles and one-worded answers 😂 But we felt strangely so connected and somehow understood one another. I love how you’ve described it all here!!!
I was on a zoom call last week and my mic wasn't working. One of my compatriots razzed me and said "come on! Charades! Make it work!" Little did he know I work with Burmese refugees and spend most days talking with ppl for 8 hours without speaking two meaningful sentences audibly. Crazy how much you can communicate without words when words aren't an option.
@@RedHair651 i admit it was a bit of an overstatement but the principles of it apply to school in general. Most people totally forget how algebra works after they finish school (or pick whichever subject you like) l. Unless it is applicable to your adult life then generally my point stands.
@@86samsky We put aside in the back of our mind everything we dont need in our life but we have learned. Did you like math then algebra wont be forgotten and certainly language if you use it. I was taught french and english from 5th to 12th grade. English I started learning on my own and French was taught by school. I still remember the pronunciation rules in french. I still remember that eau and au is pronounced as "o" , ou as "u" and so on but I dont use it is just something that I remember from school. If I were to pick french and learn how to fluently speak it it would be very easy to me. i still remember the basics of everything school has taught me. What was just nationalism regarding history and what we now know that it wasnt the entire picture of some events. Your point doesnt stand atleast not when it comes to me.
@@s1os2s3 i wasn't insinuating that we all just wipe that memory of french class out. I still remember things like please i live in i like i dont like( only writing in english as i would probably offend someone with my spelling in french). For some reason the uk system taught us french for 2 years then you choose spanish or german which you do for 2 years then choose to drop the french or chosen second language for the last year. (Might be for the thicko classes like mine😂) Either way it's a terrible waste of time as i much preferred german but had to do 4 years of french.
I’m an ESL teacher and absolutely! Conversation and audio/visual input (movies, music) is the BEST way to build confidence and start using another language.
My daughter aced a grade school spelling bee because she played the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. She remembered one of the words because of the Great Deku Tree's dialogue! 😆
I've always had a way with words and I blame that on the amount of time I've played video games and been on my computer since I was 5, and as I'm typing this I'm realizing I could do that with my target languages.
My rule when learning a new language is first knowing the curse words. My mom studied Spanish and was capable of having conversations. But when we went to San Sebastian, a guy literally was trying to push her with his car, almost crushing her. She was so angry that she only wanted to scream curse words but she couldn’t and felt even more frustrated and pissed because of that. Since then, the first words I want to know when learning a new language are curse words because they will come in handy at some point.
the tip of "adding fun" to it is SUCH a good point!! I grew up my entire life being taught (both formally at school and casually at home) mandarin and a chinese dialect, but was always punished if i even made the smallest mistake. Thats why until now, i dont speak it well at all and often forget words; out of both fear of being punished for getting something wrong, or just lack of motivation to get it right. I've only recently gotten slightly better (still need lots of practice tho!) because of talking to my mandarin-speaking friends in mandarin (and not being punished for mistakes lmao), and playing videogames like stardew valley while speaking in mandarin ! awesome video! i learned so much
I stopped going to my chinese private lesson because the pressure is awful, like everyone in my class is already pretty good in chinese but I'm the only one that lags behind. Studying there isn't fun at all, and everytime I make mistake I feel worse. But learning english for me is much easier because all the videogames I played and movies I watched is in english subtitle and it's fun and better than studying chinese, miserably trying to memorize all the chinese characters and the insane intonations.
Surprisingly, it seems revolutionary when talking about adults, despite the fact the same rules apply to us. Play in education. As simple as it gets, engagement improves focus. Positive emotion may increase the chances of repeating the act. I'd like to think that having any emotional connection, preferably positive would improve retention as well.
This video is like an article with an incredibly good summary. In such articles everything is laid out in a very interesting way in the summary, but when you read the rest of the article, nothing new has been written.
I think this way in latin too. In other languages, like Italian, the position of words in the phrase tells you what function that word has. With Latin, it doesn't matter if I put a word at the start or in the middle of the phrase: if it's a nominative it's the subject, end of the story.
Now I understand why I hated studying Latin so much but had a blast with Spanish. My Spanish teacher spoke Spanish from the first second she entered the classroom and made us have conversations about every day stuff and smalltalk
This is exactly what my German professor did. Very, very first day he started speaking German. I had a background knowledge of German, so I understood a bit, but everyone in the class was able to learn regardless. By the end of the semester, we were all able to have basic conversations with each other about a lot of every day things.
I can relate to this. Learned Latin years ago. Sure, you know the declension and conjugation of "Agricola Arat", but you can't speak the damn language to each other. Studying Spanish now, and it's fun how i can now buy stuff from a store or buy food using spanish.
This is the approach I took with Japanese learning. I moved to Japan 3 years ago, didn't know a single word. I now speak/read/write well enough to express myself and understand others. Objective wasn't to study Japanese, it was to communicate with those around me.
Children learn to speak a language without language courses, I try to do like them, by consuming content (books for kids, news in easy language, tv shows, games, etc.)
@@_ikako_ I would try watching anime for very very young kids, with very very basic words. Then I trust my brain to do the connection between words and meaning. And I would do it every day (aka spartan method 🙂)
@@_ikako_ it’s kind of possible. I learned fluent Italian when I was 3 by just playing with other kids and going to school there. I never had any kind of course or grammar class. It the same with English. My English may not be perfect but I can speak write and understand 99% of most books and videos. I did that by just watching a lot of English movies and TH-cam etc.
This method was how I was taught Japanese, in Japan. Including memorising reading and writing these words. With the technical elements of the language gradually introduced later. Vocabulary is everything when learning a language.
I had the same experience with japanese, at first they teach you many words and only after some time you start with grammar to put them together. Very funny and very easy
I had a teacherfor japanese when I was there and thats what they do, teach you the baisc words, grammar and kana, and it worked, but I was also placed in an environment when I had to learn the language since not all your school teacrs are gonna give you concessions
How should I keep learning japanese. I started one month ago and I know some vocabulary, but that cant be the way, do you have some advice or Plan how to learn japanese in a productive way.
@@balkanmadnessmadeinaustria5837 you need to do excercise. Learn hiragana and katakana, learn words, do quizes and tests to see if you are truly studying. Watch japanese media content meant for childrens so that you can expand your vocabulary naturally. When you know some common words and phrases that are usually spoken by natives you will eventually need to learn the grammar, but you will find out that japanese is not really all that difficult compared to English.
Thanks for the advice until now I didnt Focus to much on japanese Media, but certainly Im gonna do it from now on. Is it helpful in the meaning grammer wise, that I speak German and a slavic langauge, is japanese in its own unique way more complicated or less complicated, than lets say german or a slavic language?
A few years ago my company started hiring seasonal workers from Mexico. They didn't speak English, and my coworkers didn't speak Spanish. Management wanted everyone to use translation apps, but I found it to be inefficient and both parties were unsure if the app actually used the correct words for the context. So I took the most important words used in my department, and turned it into a game of repetition with my crewmate. He would say the word in Spanish, I would say it in English, and the rest of the day I would say it in Spanish and he would say it in English. After the 2nd week of work, we could clearly and neatly convey what needed to be done for each job, and we were able to get to know each other and work comfortably. The biggest hurdle is overcoming the fear of sounding awkward.
Your last sentence hits so close to home. Except for me it isn't really a hurdle more like a colossal mountain. I'm awkward around people as it is, I don't think I can ever bring myself to speak to a native speaker.
@@primary_magic1227 That's understandable, I still get self conscious from time to time, especially when I need to talk to groups of native-Spanish speakers. I just figured that trying to communicate and sounding like an idiot would go a long way toward earning their respect, as opposed to just shoving a translated app message in their faces. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn and get better, it helps to see it as empowering instead of embarrassing.
@@TheBaronVSP Yeah I guess that's true. Such an obvious realization but still something I tend to forget a lot.
Thank you for the reply!
Ooh and I like the way you handled the situation at your company. Efficient and by far a better way to create a good relationship with a coworker. Props to you for that!
@@primary_magic1227 what helped me get over this fear was realizing that every time I spoke to someone for whom english wasn't their first language, I was expecting them to do this and maybe sound awkward to communicate with me, while not being willing to do that myself. I realized how much I appreciate it and am impressed when a non-native speaker says something as simple as like hello/goodbye/thank you
I think thats what pidgin languages are. 2 different groups share only the most important words and learn a combination that everyone involved can understand well enough to do whatever they needed to get done
I spent 14 years learning French at school. Forgot most of it at uni. Decided to switch my PS4 to French for fun. I learnt more usable French in 3 months of gaming than 14 years in class
I learned more hanging around old online chat rooms, even when their numerous colloquialisms and abbreviations, then I did in four years of school...actually using a language is what really makes it stick.
Same here. I have Chinese relatives who tried teaching me Chinese. Switching my game to Chinese and watching some Chinese videos taught me a ton more than I ever learned from a decade of relatives trying to teach me Chinese formally.
You acquired French instead of learning it. That's the secret.
Check out Stephen Krashen regarding this topic and throw away your old ideas of how languages get into brains :D
But you need books , I learn from games like I learnt English,and I sounded like a video game character
I learned all the curses in Italian in Highschool playing assassins creed with the language in Italian with just English subtitles and referred too my Italian friends on my accuracy.
You are an incredible human being and it has been a real honor to get to work with you man. I love this analogy.
You two are the most hipsterous people on Earth
Gli hai fatto imparare qualche parolaccia? :)
Two of the most inspirational people on youtube, wow!
He's awesome
Johnny Harris x Nathaniel Drew best crossover ever
One of my college English professors started her class by telling us "I am here to teach you academic English. This is not the English you speak, it is not the English you read in a novel or a newspaper. It is the English used in an academic environment to write academic papers and nothing more." That line was a lightbulb moment for me that I have always carried with me since.
I really wonder why this is the approach. I guess in college it makes more sense to focus on the academic aspect of a language, but in general it's not where you should start when you're a complete beginner trying to learn a new language.
This is so true. I'm an English as a foreign language teacher and I tell my students that grammar is important but it's not all that people make it be. I try to make learning natural and fun and without pressure. Now I also have students that study with me to pass TOEFL or Cambridge and I tell them that since what I teach them is academic and to pass the exam and not exactly everyday English so that they clearly know that the exams are not a picture of real language used by common folk
@@rody2k6 LEGENDS DEFEATED JOHNNY HARRIS TO COMPLETELY WATCH THIS LOOONNNG VIDEO 😁
@@hummingbird1375simple more complex studying material = more understanding and boosted learning
Oriel Lindsey. I still remember the name of the professor who told me that. She told us what we needed to know for our exam; then we proceeded to learn English. As a matter of fact her approach made us feel like she was on our side.
Sorry I'm rambling a bit lmao
Best teacher I've ever had, and one of the best human being I met.
By watching your videos, I am learning English. Thanks.
Summary:
0. Select the language you want to learn
1. Create a database of the most common and useful words of about 1000
2. Start talking early, preferably with native speakers
3. Make it fun, read books, listen to audio, watch movies in this language
4. Eventually you will have to learn the rules, but it will be much easier than if you first learned the rules and then started to learn the language
+ play zelda
The Achilles Heel of all language learning instruction is that a native speaker never “learns the rules.” As a native speaker, you learn all of the details. The expression any rule is someone’s attempt (language teacher?) to quantify in a simple way the sum of all of the details that everyone already knows. Put simply, if you ever try to learn the rules of a language, you are doing it backwards.
This makes so much sense when you realise that this is exactly how people learn their mother tongue. You don't begin with the rules, you begin by learning how to communicate
Yup. You want food. You point to your mouth. You want to say hi, you smile and wave. Simple words like yes, no, want, more, up, down. Lettering one word just to get the message across. Then you learn a couple words at a time, like I want (or me want when you're first learning). Then words like please and thanks you. Before you know it, you're building sentences like "I want more" and "pick me up." Like you said, it's just communicating everyday things, not about detailed nuances.
yeah, to be fair though, on top of that, kids have been shown to basically be language sponges at a really young age, they can learn something like 3-4 languages or more simultaneously in the right environment, its basically just a case of bringing them up and using 2 or more languages interchangeably throughout their life and they just pick it up because the brain is so active and rewiring itself to understand everything at that point, where as an adult would probably have a fair amount of difficulty learning any more than 2 at a time, especially if they were pretty unrelated languages to each other.
@@ImKevan Actually, kids aren't that good at learning multiple languages. They are if you do it correctly.
Speaking multiple languages simultaneously in the same environnement is going to confuse them and instead of knowing one language perfectly like other kids, they'll end up speaking multiple languages in a mediocre way.
This situation happens if by "speaking multiple language simultaneously", you mean, for example, one parent switching from a language to another.
For example : "My petite fille ? Can you take me le bol ? Merci darling."
Another example "Ma petite fille ? Tu peux m'apporter le bol ? Merci, ma chérie" (I just repeated what I said before) and then the same parent says "Oh and btw, the cereals are there".
In this situation, the child always has to make the effort to adapt to whatever language the parent will choose. It takes a lot of effort out of the brain and completely confuses it.
Of course, the child is going to understand what I said before. However, they will understand it perfectly in the context of their family. When they will have to speak obky one language with their peers, it will be different.
Children that come from multilingual family that do it that way actually have a harder time learning the language. Multilingual children are eventually going to have to communicate with other children that aren't. If the child cannot communicate without switching from one language to another, then s/he is going to be at a lesser level of communication than the other children.
It doesn't matter that you can say a mediocre sentence in three languages if the other children can say the same sentence and do it more correctly and even do more complicated sentences in the language.
If you mean one parent speaking in one language and the other parent speaking and ALWAYS speaking in another language, then yes, this can work. But that also means that parents will have to choose one language to speak with each other and not changing in front of the kids.
The child NEEDS to be adressed in the SAME language by the SAME parent or in the SAME situation.
Children need a strict environnment. One language for one environment. It's either "Daddy speaks Corean and Mommy speaks English" or "Daddy and Mommy speak Corean but we all speak English when we eat" or "Daddy and mommy speak Corean to each other but speak english to us".
If you mix everything and switch languages on a daily basis, you're only going to confuse your child.
So basically, you should focus on teaching your child how to communicate in the language of their peers first and not teach them multiple languages just for the sake of it.
@@petitesayo4542 Yeah I'm not saying it JUST happens, there's definitely a whole lot too it and its most certainly not as simple as I probably made it sound, and as far as I'm aware, its only been properly done and studied a few times, but the results do seem to show that kids have a far greater ability than we do at older ages to pickup languages.
@@suwapete9761 yeah that makes sense too I guess, and probably really should make more sense to me when I think about it, since I play guitar, I'm pretty good at it, better than most in fact, but a lot of that really just comes down to me really enjoying playing guitar and spending far grater amounts of my spare time practicing than most other people do, I did also have the benefit of starting really young too, but even now I still spend far more time just playing guitar than most people who consider playing guitar a hobby.
My Dad always used to say he was "fluid", not fluent when speaking German. The more beer he drank, the better the German sounded and the easier the conversation was. Being too worried about making errors when speaking means you're less likely to try.
Everything in life is like that every challenge and skill. Actually. Errors aren't the end.
An error ist just a failure if it makes you stop trying. If it doesn't, it's just an opportunity to improve.
And most Germans know, that our language is an extreme pain in the ass.
I refer to my German as BarDeutsch, because I learned most of it in high school while not in the best state, often hungover, and when I took a summer exchange, I became fluent by going to the bar and speaking exclusively in German. I made people play pictionary with me to figure out what I was trying to say sometimes, all the while ordering in German. Listening to German radio and music, etc. I can see how this works with programming a game. You just need to start, throw yourself into the world.
This is exactly the reason why bavarian and saxon works and its also how they sound like!
As an Italian, I am actually impressed of how good you can speak Italian in so little time, I had zero problems understanding even the clip of six weeks in
Do you want to practice Spanish?
LEGENDS DEFEATED JOHNNY HARRIS TO COMPLETELY WATCH THIS LOOONNNG VIDEO 😁
@@enriquegabriel7708 in most schools half the students study spanish alongside with english, the other half studies french
If you believe this crap... these videos are meant to make money
@rogersjung3612 in fact all romance languages are more Harder than english
The way language is taught in schools is like if you were taught to play guitar by learning how to play every chord, but never played a song.
Good analogy. I think it's more like if you were taught all of the theory behind the different scales and modes and all of the chords but never picked up a guitar.
It's the same with everything in schools. Why do you think university graduates are driving buses and cleaning toilets?
@@misterscottintheway Agree, in my country English is a mendatory language to learn (as a second language). As someone who has never paid any attention in school but still learned English, I can say the way schools teach us is very inaffective. It took me just 3 years to learn English on the internet by having conversations with people and making friends in videos games who mostly only spoke English.
at my school we do get taught how to say sentences, its just sentences that we'd use maybe twice in our whole life? such as where we went on vacation, what the weather was like, where we live, what we live next to etc and i find it dumb
In my school, we had like 60% of each trimester being about grammar, conjugaison, vocabulary, the boring stuff. The remaining 40% however, and those represented 100% in exams sessions, were: oral expression, written expression, listening comprehension, reading comprehension. Where you actually had to work around actual, written/spoken english. Sure, you get penalties if you made grammar mistakes, but the most important part was about being confident and make a sensible text/speech (in expression), or understand the core ideas being the text/audio (in comprehension). It is also the same in universities. So my English is not perfect, once again, often do I make grammar or conjugaison mistakes, but I know how to communicate with people.
It's also why many people say "I learned more about English online than in classes" because you learn how to communicate, even if it's poor. At first, only a few words for people to understand a direct order/info, then as time goes on you make more complicated sentences, and people will instinctively correct the most important mistakes you make, and as time goes on you can speak the language.
I am literally dedicating my life to developing language learning video games. So happy to see this video and conversations happening in the comments!
My man, would you care to share your work on your youtube channel or somewhere else? Im extremely interested, both in the results of your work, as well as your progress and resources. Video games are an incredibly valuable tool and im shocked they are not utilized more for learning purposes
@@MrMegaMetroid don't know about you, but I'm so interested in this that I'm subscribing to ewwitsantonio preemptively
Very curious to see how they go about it
Why make a video game for language learning if you can learn a language just by playing a normal actual fun game and learn tons of vocab and words and ultimately learn the language through listening and reading a lot?
And also there is already a game for pc and android devices that has this purpose.
Would you ever be looking for programmers? I actually thought that would be something Id like to do.
He didn't realize it, but that's actually the method everyone learns their language as kids. You first memorize words you hear your parents speaking, then you start trying to emulate them saying them yourself, and then you go to school and learn how it really works. :D
As adults, we can do all that in less than 4-5 years, and that's why his method should work for anyone and everyone. :)
Nailed it, this is the best comment on this video, thank you
:)
True. Immersion is key. That's why people that go to places where they don't speak the language would be able to naturally acquire the language even if they barely put in the effort in learning compared to someone that will meticulously study the language in their own place.
And this is exactly why native English speakers sometimes ask foreigners how to spell some words in their own language. Very surprising at first but actually makes sense. Granted, it's also because English spelling is a horrible mess: how do you pronounce "-ough"? (The Great Vowel Shift)
@@M69392 SEVEN DIFFERENT F******* WAYS
I HATE ENGLISH SO FREAKING MUCH!!!
I teach English as a foreign language, and have studied Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian to varying levels ranging from full degree at university to functional holiday level, and here are some observations (apologies in advance for this self-indulgent essay):
One of the misunderstood concepts in language learning is "being fluent" - some people think it means speaking "like a native"; for others (myself included) it means "being able to express what you want / need". I’ve taught people who are very fluent but make a load of small mistakes, and on the other hand I’ve taught people who can write an incredible essay and understand a complex text but struggle to express themselves in more spontaneous situations.
I’m often asked "How long does it take to learn a language?", to which I answer: “What do you mean by LEARN?” "How long are you willing to study every day? How are you going to study? What are your aims? Do you want to go on holiday to an English-speaking country every summer or do you want to work in an English-speaking environment?”
Speaking to yourself is a great way to get better, as that’s when you notice all the things you don’t actually know. You practice forming ideas in your head and expressing them out loud, which is what you need to be good at when speaking to an actual person.
Never neglect listening skills - you can memorise all the phrases you want, if you can’t understand what someone says, it’s not worth that much. And always remember that not all speakers of a language are as good at grading their language as the Italki teacher in the video. Anyone who has ever asked for a train ticket in another language can vouch for that.
Don’t pay too much attention to the internet polyglot community - they often pride themselves on being insanely good at languages above anything else. I’m ok at playing the guitar, but I don’t need John Frusciante or John Meyer to tell me I’m not as good as them - I just don’t need to be.
Learning a language is a long and arduous journey, but the beautiful thing about it is you’re constantly learning, and being able to communicate with someone in another language is the best thing ever.
It’s also like everything else in life, you get out of it what you put in.
Once again, apologies for this rambling, I’ve just never felt the urge to post anything sensible on a TH-cam video until now.
thank you for commenting this!!
@@kayrat1610 I'm glad you liked, thanks for commenting!
I love your commentary. English is not my first language and I feel really insecure to write without the translator. Makes me happy to understand everything :)
TRUE
Your comment is better than this video.
I literally learned a lot of English when I was a kid, playing A Link To The Past, with a dictionary next to me, what a journey. Thanks for this video!
I was exactly the same. There were so many contextual clues in the interactivity that is sorta works out naturally.
That's probably quite a lot of people like that. I definitely learned English on the computer, doing whatever, including gaming.
Resident evil on ps1. :-D
Me too! With a dictionary! Zelda and FF4 (Cecil & Co.)
my adult life has benefit so much of all the JRPG i played as a kid using a dictionary.
Something worth keeping in mind is that, in some places, if you can't speak the language "properly", the locals will just switch to English (Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, etc.) or pretend they don't understand you (France).
Pretend they don't understand you (France) took me into orbit lmfaoob
Native speakers of English are at a disadvantage here because people all over the world learn the language and many speak it amazingly well. Also most native English speakers have an immediately recognizable accent. If someone comes from a different country and claims not to know English, the natives of the countries you mentioned would have no choice but to speak to you in their language. I would claim to be from a different country but sadly my accent always gives me away.
or refuse cause they wana pactice english
That was what happened to me in Italy. I was there for a summer and really tried to learn some Italian, but every time I went into a shop and started to order something, the person I was talking to would always be like, "You know, I speak English, lol." And I was too shy to explain that I wanted to learn, so I just gave up and switched back to English.
@@Dachusblot I have to deal with this every fucking time in Los Angeles with everyone using me as their guinea pig 😩 it's soooo annoying!!! aaah lol I speak three languages and I want to practice more but this assholes won't let me haha
As an Italian, I find him fluent and can understand everything he's saying. He sounds like a spanish guy speaking italian.
For me absence of typical italian gestures was more noticeable than his accent (although his accent is pretty hard). )
I don't speak italian but i speak a bit of spanish and that was what i also thought. A spanish speaking italian. :)
Makes sense, he does know spanish, so he is likely relating what he knows about one romance language to another.
I speak a bit of English and nothing else and I too found that he spoke Italian funky
@@colatf2 when you say "and nothing else"... I mean you must have a mother tongue, right? :p
Just came here to recommend setting Animal Crossing New Horizons to your target language and starting a new file. There are so many random objects and various every day conversations. I learned so much Japanese vocabulary from that game alone.
oh yeah I did this with Stardew Valley and I think it's similar - basic simple conversations about day to day life and lots of words for groceries and everyday items. Some games are a bit more focussed on sci fi or fantasy objects/scenarios which is less useful
I wanted to try that, but I don't want to have to bulldoze my island for it. :(
@@infamoussphere7228 As soon as I read the original comment say they changed their Animal Crossing language, I was like huh, maybe I should try changing my Stardew Valley language since I'm playing it a lot lately, so I'm glad to see your comment! Looks like I'll be changing my Stardew to Japanese next time I play :)
@@LendriMujina idk about AC but some games don't keep saves across accounts on the switch so if you add a second profile you might be able to have two islands on the go
@@namae6637 No, that just opens a second house on the same island. AC:NH is one of the few Switch games that shares data between profiles.
Son : "Two plus two equals 22"
Johny : "No son, that's wrong"
Son : "No dad, I'm speaking in JavaScript"
Underreated joke
@@huytranvan2754 underreated? 120 likes!
Do you mean this:
ꦪꦺꦴꦲꦸꦩꦼꦲꦤ꧀ꦛꦶꦱ꧀
@@leonelrs18 ahh yes, Balinese script
@@leonelrs18 Nggih
The level of Italian he achieved in 4 months is impressive. However, I think he's underestimating just how much being fluent in Spanish helped him. Italian and Spanish are almost mutually understandable...
i think he's still pronouncing some words the spanish way instead of the italian way.
I'm italian and i can confirm that he has a bit of a mix accent for what i can hear
Very inglish, but some words have a bit of a spanish vibe
"I may be fluent in one romance language while spending 4-7 years intensely studying another, but somehow learning a third over 6 months wasn't that hard!"
I was thinking that about his French minor... Italian is just French / Spanish triangulation
@@joaoassumpcao3347 Can confirm that.
John is like the most professional unprofessional Journalist I’ve ever seen
that's why we love him :)
the only compliment I need. Thank you!
id argue that he still gets paid to be a journalist so he is still a professional. lol.
Hey cj how u doing.
All we had to do was follow the damn train CJ
I’m an ESL teacher with experience teaching learners in Uzbekistan and Jordan and a masters degree in Educatuon and innovation. What he’s talking about is called “communicative language learning” where your main goal is just communicating your ideas in the target language. Nowadays, communicative language teaching is becoming much more popular in the academic literature, but educational innovations are generally lagged by about a generation because the you need to wait until the university students who are learning these methods become teachers and start using them before you see results.
Hey! Shoutout to Uzbekistan and to you too!
Thanks for letting us know that there’s hope on the horizon
@@zafarchoriev4746 to Jordan as well
"I just like maps, okay?" why would we judge you for that? We're here for the maps too
THIS!!
Yes we are!
I kno he’s acting like he’s the only one that likes map
A turtle is also here for the maps
yea, i quite fancy maps
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” - Nelson Mandela
Absolutely
I have always loved this quote..
@@felicee me too
@Whatever 😂😂
I got super incredibly lucky with my French teacher in high school. She taught French immersion from day 1 of freshman year--starting with very basic French and working up to more complex language by the time I graduated. She had us speak back to her in French, as well as reading/writing exercises, but never any grammer or conjugation lessons (unless we asked). In only four years of her class I learned to speak and understand much of it. I'm not fluent and I make many mistakes, but I could go to France and have a decent conversation. One of the best teachers I've ever had!
Well my little brother’s quite lucky too, as his teacher started using Comprehensible Input in his French class.
Yet you didn’t even give her the simple credit of saying her name…
@@mitchos9925 Name droping people on the internet isn't the greatest of thing^^' I get what Aly said, I just posted my experience about my german teacher, and I wouldn't give his name up either
i agree that this is the best way to learn, but it only works for students who WANT to study in my experience. i teach english as a second language, and a lot of the kids who are bad at english just dont listen to you or dont try to respond in english, so the method is lost on them. i dont blame them, despite doing this for my job i dont think everyone NEEDS english, nor should they. but all im saying is its a good tactic, but only works for those with some will to learn, or who are already good enough to work around the basics
Same! I graduated in 2020, but back in 7th grade, I took German, and that Jr. High (7-9) German teacher was so cool, and so much fun! He taught us about the culture, introducing new things to keep it exciting and fresh, but still teaching us new words, the sentence structures, and so forth. He was mostly talking to us in German, and followed up with English shortly after, speaking less English as the years went by. Unfortunately my high school (10-12) teachers were the opposite. 10th grade was fun, but was mostly history quizzes, with very little German speaking. 11th grade was a new lady, and she thought she was a cool teacher, but we would just sit around reading text books, “Correcting Astrid’s grammar!”. I dropped it my senior year. Aber ich liebe die Sprache! Auch jetzt noch!
I would agree that what you have is not fluency but the thing is, it's enough, and also, it can be a base for learning more, it's way easier to learn more of the language when you can understand it well, so you can watch movies, youtube, talk with people, etc. In my opnion, this isn't "the new way to learn languages" it's the "new first step to learn languages".
I totally agree. When you think about, learning a language firstly with the focus of just being able to communicate without worrying about making grammar mistakes is the most natural approach. This is how babies learn, and to me, it seems also to be the most intuitive and effective approach. You first want to have a general knowledge of the language, that means, knowing a significant amount of vocabulary and having just a brief general idea about how grammar works. You might make a lot of mistakes, but at least you understand most conversations and are already able to communicate. And it's there then, after having reached a certain amount of general understanding of the language, that you start focusing on the details and strive for "perfect" grammar, spelling and all that stuff. It's so unnecessary, in the first stages of learning, to focus so heavily on knowing a random grammar topic perfectly like conditionals when your overall understanding of the language doesn't depend on that.
I learned English first and grammar second. English is my only language. Learning a language first and grammar from being corrected or reading, or listening or watching is normal. It's like playing a sport. You learn to play the sport before you learn all the skills, rules, and stuff because sitting and learning the rules and skills from a book would fucking suck.
I play soccer in a beer league and we all have to remind each other of the rules because we all haven't played in 10 years
At the end of the day, "i no speek gud" is just as useful as "Pardon me, my friend; I am not terribly skilled at the language of English yet."
It can become an issue if you don't have enough words to talk about things, but honestly, there is too much stake put on grammar in the first few weeks of learning.
*the language of Chaucer
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick
Ironically...saying "not terribly skilled' means "skilled" - a poorly timed double negative for this example.
I'm sure this makes more sense if you speak the Queen's English.
i really don't care if someone isn't completely fluent in english, because most people that speak to me and english isn't their first language at least know the basics, which i respect. i'm currently learning german, and i hope that when i attempt to speak to them, they understand what i mean, even it's the most basic of phrases
“Lasagna Bolognese”
Ah yes, everyday Italian words.
one of my main reasons for learning italian is to better understand the cuisine. so I integrated loads of niche culinary terms into my practice because that's the version of the language I want to learn
@@johnnyharris thats a solid reason if ive ever heard one. Im currently learning japanese so im hoping this goes well!
Lasagne alla bolognese.
goodness when I heard him say that I died 😆
I think jhonny wants to be limitless' bradly Cooper and wants to impress Iz in italian restaurants😂
When a baby is learning it’s mother’s tongue it’s not worrying about grammar and conjugation
Then over time you just rearrange the order of the words. But first, you need to know what to call something.
Yes, and the best part is most native speakers don't know the rules anymore. I've seen this with French and English people, they don't know the rules, they just apply them without even thinking about it at all
Not fully related to what you said, but did you know that babies and adults learn languages at different rates? When I first started researching language learning methods, I was sure that babies were better and faster at learning languages than adults, but apparently that’s not the case. Having knowledge about general language usage, the ability to use translations and more complex studying techniques actually allows adults to learn languages much faster than babies. Despite that, adults can also use the same method that babies use to learn languages to fluency, but it can be quite frustrating of a process if you don’t know how to do it right. I think it’s called the naturalistic method of language learning, and some polyglots swear by it.
Within my own language studies, I’ve found that it’s easier to learn grammar by studying it than by simply trying to learn it from context, but you can definitely learn a lot of it through context if you know enough words. The thing is, it’s kind of useless to learn grammar that you don’t have an active use case for. It’s frustrating, confusing, and you’ll forget how to use it because you aren’t using it. I’ve found it’s better to study only the grammar that’s relevant to what you want to express at that point in your journey. I’ve found that it makes you less critical of your own mistakes and more likely to not care if you are saying things correctly because the point is you don’t bother with something until it actively limits your ability to communicate, and you are forced to learn how to be the most expressive with what you already know.
@@konchaku It is that point of trying to make links, till it just clicks.
Like that great English to German video, by the end of it, you can understand what is said and know the answers. But ask them 30mins after most draw a blank.
But a baby will speak their first words after one or two years of all day exposure to the language. We cant learn like that as adults, firstly because we are not learning our native language rather a language we DON'T hear every day, or even at all. I agree grammar is not the most important in the beginning but if you wanna be fluent you have memorize the grammar. Its useless to learn vocabulary if you don't know the verbs to be and to have at least. And that means memorizing it.
When I was learning a language a long time ago, I used a mix of yours and the conventional method. I bought a textbook that explained all the basic grammar rules and I used that as a base to practise the non-conventional way mostly by talking to as many natives as I could. Thinking of trying to learn a new language again, but I'm not sure yet which one i'd want to learn.
I'd just start with one of the "main" languages, like Spanish or French or maybe even some others like German or polish. If you want a challenge, go for Japanese.
@@michaelhunt9717 are you saying japanese isnt recomended as a first second language? even if i have the ability to talk with a native speaker daily through work? genuine question lol
@@rainedrop14 Yeah I don't recommend Japanese as your first second language. Not saying there's anything wrong with doing so, it's your life. If you have an easy time with it, then by all means, go ahead.
@@michaelhunt9717 Interesting how to you Spanish and French are "main" languages but not Mandarin and Hindi which are both higher on the list of most spoken languages.
Or do you just use "main" synonymously with "European"?
@@ਮਨਪ੍ਰੀਤ-ਪ1ਚ I think by main they mean that English speakers often learn these ones first as there is a smaller jump between English and Spanish than English and Hindi or Mandarin
Hearing you speak Italian made me realize that I can understand Italian 50% because I speak Spanish
You should watch the ecolenguist video: th-cam.com/video/VCtg1upDmWs/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=Ecolinguist I had entire conversations with italians in spanish back in Italy.
As a Portuguese speaker, I understood pretty much of his Italian too
Yes that makes the whole video a bit useless... Speaking two romance languages is making it so much easier to learn a third... Ofc it took less time if you more or less know the grammar and the vocabulary
It works also the way around, when I went to Spain I could ask in italian and get answers in spanish and understand all without problems :)
I am really thinking of learning Spanish, and Italian at the same time. But I am not sure if I learned Spanish would I be able to understand Italian too. And now I know that u understand 50% so I am glad I will start with Spanish.
Something really important that he didn't mention (or rather he just skimmed over it) is that you NEED to immerse yourself in the language you're learning. This makes the process of learning grammar and pronunciation so much more intuitive. Watch YT videos in french, watch german movies, listen to italian music, play your games in spanish. After hearing and reading so much of your language of choice, the right way to say and write things will just become intuition. Me and many friends that know how to speak english properly, have never studied a single grammar rule in our lives, and yet we can write and talk perfectly fine because "it sounds right". Immerse yourself in the language, then everything becomes a learning opportunity
I agree and at the same time disagree with you (a little, but still). I agree that you need to immerse yourself- watch movies/YT, read articles/books, play games in the "chosen" language, but most importantly "try it" - speak, write, especially if you don't feel confident at it and are afraid of using it. However I think that you need a little knowledge of grammar- not saying that knowing all the rules, tenses etc. will be the only condition to speak, (and for sure all of them are not needed in everyday communication) , but in some situation can be helpful. And unfortunately, in some languages without knowing basic (main) rules, it will be extremally difficult to progress and speak "fluent".
Indeed. There's a reason English is the most spoken second language. That's just simply because of our pop culture. Most people grow up watching American movies and listening to American music.
As an Italian, I highly suggest you don't listen to italian music, it sucks
@@Sophie1763 yeah, learning a little grammar at an intermediate level is extremely helpful in progressing the language faster. Of course, one could do without but it does save time in figuring out the whys in the language
@@federicoantonietti7851Sorry you feel that way, 😂
I learned English through videogames and tv as a kid. Meanwhile I did not retain any of the foreign languages that were taught to me in school..
Did a test when I was 18 and my score was literally flawless. University level English in all categories. Mostly thanks to Pokémon and Friends lol
Sure, thing is though, your using english alot, and interact alot more to people with it. So ofc youll retain it easier
This is why college (IN ITS CURRENT FORM!!!!) is not only a scam, its a waste of time.
@@alfredharrison597 ok buddy
Same
And I ended up being a private tutor lol
Same except i have no idea where i actually learned it, and now im struglibg to remember so i can learn other languages in the same way
Completely true. While my friends loved to play videogames in Spanish, our native language, I did it in English. I also watched movies/series in English until I started to do it without subtitles. And I only did it that way because I like it. It was subconscious. I was having fun and learning at the same time. I make mistakes, sure. Lots of them. But I am more or less fluent. Now I even read novels in English. And people around me were surprised. I never talked regularly with an English speaker, so I lack a lot of practice in that painful area, but I agree with your video.
You still have to study... studying boosts your learning and makes you much better at that goal language
A man once said: "Over the next 2 years, I'm going to learn a new language."
"That is a very long time.." his friend responded, to which he replied:
"2 years are going to pass, whether I learn the language or not."
i like it
A beautiful thought. Thank you for sharing. :)
I love that. Thank you!
@Whatever Its enough to learn a language, you can do it in even less. Depends on how much time you put into it. Speaking it fluently will only happen if you live in X country and surround yourself with it for years (and want to learn it).
😂😂😂😂😂
What you said about the accuracy of language, and that language is not math, is very important. I am fluent in German and I make many mistakes, but, if I speak in a confident way, no one cares about the mistakes I make. I think the most important step to learning a foreign language is getting over the pressure that everything you say has to sound perfect in the beginning.
Yes!!!
Exactly
sehr gut
I actually remember watching a TED talk about exactly that! The presenter was talking about how the people who do best at learning new languages are the people who don't care about making mistakes and engage in conversation even at low levels of understanding.
Yeah, I know so many people who are scared to talk. But in my experience people just want to communicate and are generally just happy you're putting in the effort.
A great man once said: "why waste time say lot word when few word do trick
"
Ah yes, Ashton Kucher
Why try to trick when waste time z great
@@PierreLucSex but time waste no good
@@PlexorF1 no time without waste
why word
Well let's be honest. He said he speaks Spanish fluently due to his mission in Mexico. I learned Spanish over the last 10 or so years and am very fluent as well. Switching over to Italian was almost as if I had like 60 percent of this new language under my belt. Both being Latin languages gave me a massive head start in my Italian journey.
Versus learning Japanese from English
@@json7598 me learning japanese from english after i learn english from vietnamese
@@yeahboyz9314 ?? Are you flexing, good sir?
@@json7598 not really since i suck at japanese and learing from english doesn't work cuz some of the terminology i still don't know
was thinking this exact thing. I'm trying to learn Japanese from English. Never learnt another language before, and i feel so unbelievably overwhelmed. Having fluency in a language that is similar in some ways would make the process so much smoother and easier.
1. Learn the most common 1000 words
2. Start speaking asap
3. Make it fun
4. Learn Grammar
I would add input as step 2 and move everything down. Basically Refold.la
How can i talk with someone in other language *google searching*
@@brepazil You can use iTalki or other apps
@@brepazil Tandem is a really good app to use
So basically how kids learn the language around them during the first years of their lives.
Then gradually adjust for grammar and better structure
I'm an English teacher in Japan going on 20 years and I'm totally with you on this. I really wish more teachers and students understood this fundamental aspect of the language journey... Nice way to lay it all out, by the way! Fun too!
How does this work for Japanese? Do you have to do this process once with Katakana and once with Hiragana?
@@bodbyss I know the question wasn’t meant for me but you should learn Hiragana and Katakana at the same time as you learn vocabulary. I did it that way
Maps: "exist"
Johnny: "I can milk you"
Funny that Linus is your profile pic cuz he recently used this meme on a video
You can milk anything with nipples
So funny 😂
Linus sex tips
I love how Duolingo saw this video and made an update that completely goes in the opposite direction. They actually used to do it the way you propose and then changed it into the variant you describe as bad
Lmfaoo duolingo is more like duo garbo.
What was the update?
@@klodno6164 Before, the units were more freely structured. If you wanted to learn something in the category travel next, but not necessarily food yet, you were able to choose between the two, or even more. This is like the free choice of topic on diverging paths, described in the video. Now duolingo is completely linear. Each piece of a unit has to be done before you can start the next one and the order of topics is rigid. Wanna do travel next? too bad, you don't even see that travel would be next because you have to do food, now!
@@JayFolipurba damn I really gotta learn what the owl wants me to learn now 😭
@@klodno6164 so it would seem
What he's saying is actually pretty funny, because that's exactly the way how I learned French, and believe me, it works faster than other methods, I would only recommend listening to a lot of the language before starting to learn the most basic words, this way your brain is gonna be a little bit more adapted to the sounds, and your pronunciation will come out naturally
Interesting! I didn’t think about listening to the language first before learning the words
Any recommendations?
well until now, I have been living french-speaking city for around 8 months without any french background and surviving with English (my native is Uralic lang). I am gonna test if help or not for the future learning journey
@@h.ar.2937 I really really don't wanna be the "those people" which Harris mentions in the video but... He forgot to mention another one of the major language learning views which has especially been growing in popularity online in these last several years, and which has existed for much longer:
The Input Method. It's based off of the hypothesis that humans (for instance, as babies) learn language best through exposure in context, (which has been proven time and time again to be true, I myself can evidence it) because our brains are insanely good at recognizing patterns, and the ways to stimulate that progress are often quite unintuitive.
The main activities we do are:
1. SRS systems for basic vocab (just like Harris and Nathan's method)
2. Massive amounts of audio immersion followed by focusing more on meaning (Absolutely the crux of it)
3. Exercising outputting abilities using intuition developed from immersion.
(NOTE: Immersion doesn't really have anything to do with "moving to the country" or "talking to natives". With the power of the internet, there's written, audio, and video content of all forms available, and in more widely-spoken language, in all topics!)
The main difference from the method outlined in the vid is emphasis on **not** speaking early (though whether "early ouput is a "sin" or not depends on who you ask; I disagree, personally).
f you want a lot more depth "Day of French n' Swedish" and "Matt v Japan" should be your **first stops**. I promise it's worth it. ^^ Whether or not you're specifically interested in Japanese, "Cure Dolly's Organic Japanese" is also a great source)
(and the site Matt worked on refold.la/ is a god-send, it can basically serve as an input learner's Bible lol)
I hope these sources can help some comment-scrollers on their journey with languages, and I apologize if it was way too long, hehe...
@@atahirince I can assure it's a great idea. Start with some basic vocab like in the vid above, and then start consuming content of any form you like! At first you won't catch a lot, but if you keep building vocab, and recognizing it in context, your brain begins to pick apart patterns.
it took me a minute to realize that when Johnny said he was playing with his boys he meant his actual boys like his sons and not his buddies lol
In my mind I was like “but Zelda is a single player game”
i realized because of your comment to be honest
I thought friends too 😂😂
Taught myself German with Sim City 2000 when I was 12. It is real.
same with English
Lol
Wie lange hat’s gedauert?
1,5 jahre ungefähr :)
that should be a valid language learning strategy
"I learned this in school but I don't actually know anything" could be said of MANY fields of study taught in school.
School is not for teaching. It is for learning obedience.
@@yournamehereyournamehere907 true as hell, I was gonna say, school's role is almost to pretend to be learning skills while all the while it suppresses them.
@@yournamehereyournamehere907 dogmatic
This is very sad truth.
The thing is... this is how we all learn our first language. We learn the key words, we start communicating early, and only after those basic building blocks are set do we start to really refine grammar. It's the way the brain makes sense of language in general.
Up! Down! Mama! Beer!
Wait, most toddlers don't say Mama?
That's a really good point. It's really common sense but a ton gawk at it and thus confuse a lot of people who then don't know how to approach it. This is a really good point that we gotta remember.
Most people don't even "learn" the grammar really, in the sense that school teaches it, they just get the intuitive sense of how it works, because that's all one needs to communicate
@@ulti-mantis this is really common in languages with complex grammar. As an Italian (our language has a lot of rules, expecially with verbal forms) a lot of native peoples do make mistakes daily when speaking or writing.
But it also took us what 15 years or so to actually be able to speak the language like an adult. Plus we all had our first language for at least 10 years in school.
Fluency:
"Hello, good sir, excuse me, Would you perhaps be so kind as to tell me, where I could find the nearest grocery store, if it is not too much of a bother."
communication:
"food store, where?"
except Japanese where this is reversed haha
@@nyankers Very true. I think no japanese person would say something like that:"ごめんなさい、 ごはんやさん は どこ に ありますか。" but it should be grammatically correct. But I don't understand japanese politeness levels at all, so I could be completely wrong about that xD
@@GGysar i saw 'arimasuka' (ありますか) so i assume it's polite enough
Me being an oblivion NPC:
@@GGysar ごめんなさい is more of an apology than an interjection. I would say
すみません…スーパーはどこですか？ The most common word for store would be sūpā which is short for supermarket, or if you wanted to be specific you could say 食料品店 (しょくりょうひんてん) which means food store. And yes there are many levels of polite speach in Japanese, but most people only need to learn Casaul and simple polite form, "Desu/masu".
As an Italian I'll just say this: You're doing GREAT, and your videogame map theory is truly inspiring :) Thanks for posting this! Speriamo di averti presto in Italia :)
When you travels, locals LOVES when a foreigner tries to speak the language even if it is bad. That's how you get invited to places or get recommended nice spots.
I totally agree with you! I love it when a foreigner tries to speak my own language and I try continue the conversation in that language that way he/she can practice.
Same holds when I travel, I love it when I meet locals speaking to me in their language and not switching directly to English.
Not in France for some.
@@branthebrave True haha that happened to me in France aswell
in france they will look at you annoyed
Keep yo blanket statement, I didn't take french for four years just so Saisons Margaruite could waltz up to my reception and expect me to handle a check in on a "take, huur mar du" alone. If she wants a dinner recommendation she can take her independent ass and grab a map cuz shes not getting one from me with that attitude.
For anyone learning a Germanic language, one thing I found extremely helpful was learning the history of how languages started splitting, and how some words are related to English but just separated paths. Just learning some bits of history can get you quite a bit further than listening to a teacher explain to you what mood participles are and what not.
Lingustics and their history are so fascinating. I primarily want to learn German, due to family, but I also look at the other Germanic or Latin/Romance language histories (for example, Old Norse to the successor languages of today). Hell, even taking a look at Old English really puts into perspective how much English has changed in a millennium!
Do you think that for a english learner that work once we have some kind knowledge about the english language? Because my native language is not Germanic, and when I did start to learn french, I think that I would connect my skills in english to help me, but in french I found much more similarities with my native language at first.
I love this method, it’s actually kind of similar to how children start learning English for example. Majority of the time kids aren’t learning the grammar and the spelling at home, they are just learning how to convey ideas in a basic way. When kids go to school is when they start learning grammar and the right spelling etc. (at least that’s how it was for me)
exactly, thats how i learned english. I barely knew what grammar or vocabulary meant, but i do know what is correct and what isn't
You are spot on with this observation. Kids learn the basic words, object names, action names and start mashing them together. The grammar and spelling get slowing developed over many years, but the conversational part like Johnny is talking about, comes quickly and we can all understand the little ones when they talk, correct or not. Look I made a run on sentence, who cares, you understood it. Peace.
English is my third language. I never properly learned any grammar in English, I only mimicked things I read and heard. while rarely looking up a few things that weren't clear just from their usage when I had the energy.
I currently live in Korea and have used your alternate method to speak Korean, and it works well. I can make basic conversation, buy food and drink, fond shelter, buy clothing, get transportation, etc. My Korean is very basic but I get by very well. I can even tell different Korean accents apart. I feel that no matter where in Korea I am I'll be okay. I have used this same method while living in Germany, I learned the very basic words, some rudimentary grammar, and went about my way speaking dirty German. After three years living there my German was fairly good.
i was wondering about korean specifically while watching this! i took a few years in college, but could never speak it to anyone bc i think my brain had a wall up (maybe i’m just lazy)… was it hard to implement this with the different characters or was it just an extra first step?
@@tinymeatbean you mean the Korean alphabet? I think it is the easiest thing to learn in Korean, and didn't slow down learning at all. I think the grammar, which seems backwards to an English speaker, is the hardest aspect of learning Korean, plus the huge vocabulary.
I learning english when i was like 12 by playing The legend of zelda: link to the past.
Yessss, Wind Waker is the rock in which my english was built on. This video hit just right in the memories.
I leaned english purely through watching minecraft videos
Me pasó lo mismo xd , now i can express myself without thinking in Spanish
I only started learning english properly after I found youtube about 12 years ago.
I learned english through FIFA videos haha
Difference is between beating the game and completing the game!
i give this language my completionist rating of: finish it
@@tb.7788 I was going to comment something similar. hahaha
You can't 100% a language. Not even your Native one
@@kaedesakura9274 exactly. There's a ridiculous amount of words and rules and, depending on your source, they may differ
We're always learning
I am a translator and I think that as long as people understand you, YOU ARE FLUENT! The concept of language is to transmit ideas. You don't have to cite poems or whatsoever. Even though I can't take that easier approach for my profession (for obvious reasons) I think there's no right way to learn languages and that's what's beautiful about it.
I'm interested in translating, do you think it's a good idea?
Translator and interpreter do have additional duty of conveying the accurate meaning and tone.
Deep understanding of culture is immensely important, when ambiguous meaning, colloquialism get involved.
Accurate pronunciation (can be hard depending on your first language).
I guess all locals appreciate learners who won't corrupt their language, also in real-life we don't have luxury of training to full proficiency before using the language. Just keep improving. :-)
I had a similar experience when I traveled to France. Since then, I have studied on my own even more, but I haven't made the progress with communication like many other language learners. I think I'm so anxious about getting everything right that I overwhelm myself.
I will try your approach. Thanks so much for explaining it in such an interesting way!
Wait wait wait. So you're saying, the most efficient way to learn new language is not through books but through how we learn language as a toddler? That's actually good. I'll do this soon.
you choose the way it works well for you . some people need books , others cards , others videogames and some others even miniatures, etc . we do not feel or think in the same way . if you feel like asking someone to teach you is fine too , there is no invalid way to teach or learn a language , only the elitist educational systems dictates what is wrong or right when it comes down to learning and teaching and they make people believe this .
@VoJacked learning a language like a toddler is effective, that's how I'm learning 2 language's.
@@ChrisDMReloaded Immersion is basically almost every resource you mentioned lol
Well, not exactly... it takes us years to acquire a language as kids. What he presented was scientifically broken down process of how kids learn a language. First they learn the most basic words and use them very, very incorrectly. But they can convey ideas. Then kids learn grammar by seeing patterns in everyday speech.
What was done here was taken the most popular words (so a shortcut to what happens with kids), and then learning grammar through rules which is more efficient than learning it from patterns over thousands of examples.
This is a brilliant strategy (and I mean from linguistic point of view - it was my major), although in his case it is necessary to mention that knowing a language as closely related as Spanish is to Italian was a tremendous help. Trust me, that would not have happened with a language from a different language group, like Finnish or Chinese.
@@ankyfire IT IS the toddler way as far you can able to do, of course its not perfect and not as pure like toddler
If you want the toddler way, simply jump to that new place and learn directly with the native, not only you picking lot of word quickly but you also learn the structure and grammar by experience it directly
Here in Indonesia (2nd most multilanguages, over 600 language) we in different region speak with slightly different dialect to completly different language, and i see lot of people moving around and settle, and after few month they can speak just like the locals
I took French for 12 years in elementary and high school, couldn’t speak or understand it, always just barely passed the class but I wanted to speak it. After high school I lived in Quebec for 3 months and volunteered at a day care and suddenly I could speak french.
Same situation as you were before. Will try to teach it myself after high school.
I went to french elementary school and the way they spoke french was just speak it around the kids and we sucked it up like sponges and im fluent
I had the same with english, however I didn't travel, but I started watching a lot of videos in english and it happened way sooner(in 5th grade).
Great job it’s the exposure that matters
probably your 12 years worth of experience suddenly resurface
High School French Teacher here. Fluency is not memorizing grammar rules, it is internalizing them and having the ability to retrieve them when you need to. What you did is an excellent demonstration of why no one remembers the language they studied in high school. I majored in French but when I moved to France I didn’t know how to call the fire department!
It is tough for Americans because we live in a sea of English. My wife grew up in Italy and spent a month every year in France, so she speaks French well. Then she went to live in London, so she speaks English well. I took a year of high school Spanish, and then I started learning Italian at 40. I use my Italian daily but still suck. I can't imagine putting in huge effort for a a vacation. BTW, even when I'm in Italy, the Italians all want to speak English with me. ;)
I'm french and I don't always know how to call the fire departement... is it 15, 17, or 18 ?...
@@JonathanBondu Ha. In Italy they changed the emergency numbers and recently my kid was berating his Nonna because she had it all wrong.
The problem is that you *need* a reason to know the language. Chances are, if you’re just picking up a language for fun (or school) and not using it in real life on a regular basis. This is why so few Americans don’t know a second language. We don’t need to. Since 1815, an English speaking country has been the dominant world power. This makes everyone else learn English, so no matter where Americans go, people know English.
You still need to know some basic for that language, or else it is like you start the game naked,no money, no ability to walk, no ability to crawl. That's painful.
People oftenly forget that we just have spent a painfully amont of time in our Childhood to say the first few words in our mother tongue(The pain is not yours but most likely who ever raised you).
So Studying grammar help you take shortcut years of your life.
But I wholeheartly agree that living in a Native speaking community will accelerate the learning curve.
And most importantly, sometime it easier if you already know and have familarity with the concepts used in that language, which could be much harder if the language come from a very different language groups
After years of flashcards and textbooks, I used Pimsleur. It does exactly what you're talking about. It starts making you have conversations without ever telling you to go learn grammar or vocabulary. You kind of just think about the language as a series of phrases rather than trying to have a perfect understanding of how it functions... which I think is more similar to how we understand our own native language.
"I minored in French and I couldn't order a baguette."
Pardon my French, but is "baguette, s'il vou pleit" not enough?
lmao no it's completely fine which makes his comparison even more absurd
I think his point wasn't that he literally couldn't order a baguette. After all, literally going and saying "baguette" would probably be enough. I think the point was to say that even with a minor in French, the simple task of ordering food was daunting and something he was not comfortable with
It's more that feeling of "the first time you walk into the store". Try to remember what it was like being 6 years old and trying to buy a candy bar: Should you say "hey mister" or "Excuse me" or just stand in front of the register and hope to be noticed?
Not if your threshold is set by academic fluency, in which case you would not accept a grammatically incorrect and poorly pronounced sentence.
I think the main takeaway is that you need to accept you will never pass for a native speaker (not unless you move there or otherwise live and breathe the language), so it's fine to make mistakes. Then the question becomes: what's an acceptable level of mistakes, and there the answer can vary, but his threshold is that people can understand what he is trying to say.
He also addresses the other big question, i.e. what you are intending to express. If you are a tourist, you can literally make do with a few dozen phrases and a small booklet with perhaps 100 more, and get around easily and safely. Here he chose to set a very high threshold in trying to be conversational. No specialised fields, no legalese, no political subtlety but still, an expansive field.
People may object that being conversational is still not enough, and that you need to be able to read and understand the standard-bearing newspapers and newscasts, or even the main literary works. I would argue that by that standard, most people aren't fluent in their native tongue.
Just say "Bonjour ! Un tradition pas trop cuite, s'il vous plaît" if you like your baguette not too cooked/brown; or
"Bonjour ! Un tradition bien cuite, s'il vous plaît" if you like it quite browned up.
Then, 100% of the time, you'll be asked "Et avec ceci ?", to which you answer "Ce sera tout, merci". And then you pay.
I swear the number of times my whole verbal exchange at a bakery happened like that, regardless of which bakery in France, is truly impressive.
This exchange is so stereotypical it should be French 101.
Good news, some schools have already caught on to this. I took two years of German in highschool, and I never did a worksheet or had any homework. The class revolved around us speaking and listening. I haven't tried to speak German in years, but I still remember a lot of the rules. The rules were not explicitly taught to me, I know them because the sentence just sounds right.
My German teacher tough in a similar way but we still had a lot of tests and stuff
Ja lass doch mal was hören.
I'm learning German with the rules, but I only remember the rules long enough to commit the idea to my brain. I know noun gender is a thing, but I only remember the gender of a given noun by trying out which one sounds correct. Same with verb conjugation. I can get away with this in German because it's pretty simple (by comparison, I have taken Latin. Not even native Latin speakers could speak Latin without memorising declension charts.)
it's so weird to say "it sounds right" because of not being fluent, but it's just a feeling? like when i speak japanese or korean and use particles, i just *know* or *feel* when something is right. schools can't really ever teach this
Similar for me with my Latin class.
I’m currently a junior in high school, and am taking a Latin class. We definitely go over grammatical stuff, but my teacher has never really expected us to memorize. He really just wants us to understand what he’s saying and memorize the words.
I'm italian and his italian without being in italy and learning that in 4 months, is very good. Americans just chill out, grammar is not important to talk to people. The point of communication is communicating, not to know everything. Good for you for learning italian. Dovresti visitare il lago di garda, non sarai deluso.
agreed!! i never learned Korean but I watched a lot of Korean dramas and Korean Variety shows. i never knew or learned the grammar and other standard stuffs but when I speak with Koreans they told me that my Korean is natural and the wording usage is native sounding to them. I may not know a lot of formal stuffs but conversation is the only thing that matter!
Someone should make an actual RPG video game, where you have to use the language properly to get through and power-up
They did recently actually LOL
@@killercoco29 wat game? I wanna check it out
Harold II Jamiro I can not for the life of me remember the name but it is on steam for like $15 if I can I’ll reply here but it’s literally like you learn magic with learning vocabulary in a new language
@@killercoco29 name pls 🙏
Pedro’s Adventures in Spanish is a good one if you’re looking for a game to learn a language. It’s on Steam
This new way seems like how children learn. Kids talk way before "learning how to" in school. Then once the foundation is set the palace of language may be built.
Exactly, lol. People saying “but you need to know past conditional tense!!!!!! U can’t be fluent!!” Are big fat liars. As someone of mixed race, bilingual, learning to speak first was INCREDIBLE for my growth in learning everything ese.
Kids don't learn lists of vocab
@@mbrendoblair8100 absolutely no one has ever said this in the history of the world
@@oliversissonphone6143 you don't remember doing vocab tests? I had one every week until like 4th grade.
@@lucienskinner-savallisch5399 nope 😂
This is one of the most inspiring videos I've ever seen. I'm engaged to a girl from Czech Republic and for a while I've been a little hopeless about how long it might take to learn Czech. Then I watched this and immediately felt like I can start making active choices *today.*
how is it going?
Good luck mate
houston coley? wtf
All the best for your journey in learning czech. 👍
I always thought that learning czech has got to be a nightmare for a foreigner who does it the conventional way (I mean it is confusing af even for us natives), so choosing a more natural approach like this seems reasonable and will help you a lot.
Should you try to learn some formal grammar though, I recommend getting some older, more structured book from like the 90s and older (not extremely old, because of some possible archaic language that'd be confusing, but you get the point) - the reason for it is that they have less useless crap and go straight to the point, mechanically yes, but useful when you just want to check how you get from A to B. But overall, by sticking to the principles in this vid, you've set yourself up for success already.
Best of luck.
I think the idea of the video game map method is to set language goals for yourself and to not be afraid to let the goals change. You may set out to defeat the fluency boss, but along the way there may be an interesting excursion. When that shows up on your radar, you can ignore it or you can explore it. Exploring that may lead you to explore something else, and by the time it is done, the most impactful thing was not the main storyline, but the terrific and difficult sidequests along the way.
I dropped out of Spanish class in college twice. Now a beautiful Latina woman is my partner of over a year. I've wanted to give learning her language another shot because I've struggled to communicate with her parents, but I didn't know how to approach it because I previously struggled so much with it and felt embarrassed to even try. I'm going to try to learn with this method and report back.
Wait for IT :)
My boyfriend has been with me a few years and he couldn't care less about learning Spanish, wish he did though 😕
It's a good method in theory but Johnny gets a MASSIVE advantage because he already speaks fluent spanish and learned French, even if it was just unusable theory. Learning a language from the same language group makes things much easier.
@@justas423 It's a good method in practice too, but it's lacking a very important part: you're supposed to do all this along with the regular classes, this helps you and gives you an advantage when dealing with the actual tests and exams. Take it from me, I learnt English 80% through videogames as a native Spanish speaker.
Paciencia y dedicación amigo. Eso y convertir tu vida al español. Tu computador, celular, videos de TH-cam, canciones, películas... Get used to hear and think in the language that you want to learn.
I actually learned English through music, videogames and tv shows. Trying to pick up japanese as an adult has been really hard due to fear of failure, I'm always scared of messing up grammar, Kanji interpretations. It's scary af but I'm trying my best
I’m on the same boat as you :) let’s conquer Japanese
Pro tip: Don’t learn kanji separately. So instead of learning 十 and 分 separately, learn words like 十分 or 分身 or 二十
Also watch media in Japanese
same. even natives find it difficult tho :((
Same! So how is it going for you guys?
broskie, being fluent in another language, especially SPANISH, when learning ITALIAN (i mean come on lol) is a pretty big gain over someone who only speaks, say, english
I'm native Portuguese speaker and never studied Italian. I understood everything he was talking in Italian.
@@caracaes they're very similar, as of almost every neolatin language! When I went to Spain in 2017, I just used to talk in a mixture of italian, neapolitan and hand-gesture (hey, I'm still italian, can't speak without using my hands!) and it went perfectly
@@caracaes
Passively, fully agreed. Actively ... could you describe what you do for a living in Italian, or why you broke up with your first girllfriend?
@@lacdirk It is possible to understand a language without being able to produce it.
@@amicaaranearum yes, it's easier if the languages are related in the way all neolatin ones are(Portuguese, Spanish, Italian) or germanic ones (English, German, Dutch).
Better title for the video: "Leaning a new language: any% vs 100%"
Even better: Rubber Band the Video, because this was a streeeeeeeeeeeeeetch.
I'm Norwegian, and when I was a child, I didn't know English at all.
The internet for me was hard to use, I mostly ended up searching for Lego videos on youtube looking for stop motion (They were cool, don't @ me).
But I didn't understand what people were saying or writing, and so, a lot of the things I cared about was either hard or impossible to find, let alone understand.
School didn't really teach me English all that well, and so, the people in my family decided to teach me, because they thought it would be useful for me to learn...
And that they could do a better job than my teachers.
And this video pretty much sums up how I learnt English. It was never about grammar, verbs, adjectives etc etc, nor was it really ever about whether or not I could spell words... JUST that when I heard the word, I knew what it meant. And that I could say them, and write something that was close.
And the words I was taught were directly related to the things I would do, the things around me and the things I was interested in.
You wouldn't teach Quantum Physics to a 1st grader, so why teach words that are 100% unrelated to someone?
Initially, I would try to remember the words by remembering the Norwegian equivalent, but as time passed, I stopped translating things in my head and instead learnt by associating the words themselves with items or concepts... Which is... What I DO in Norwegian... That's how language works.
Although my English was garbage, I could at the very least be understood, and I could understand others... Isn't that the point of Language in the first place? To communicate?
There is no doubt in my mind that I've spelled things wrong in my comment, or that my grammar can be off... But that's fine.
There are grammatical rules in Norwegian that I didn't learn through sitting down at a desk and writing them down over and over again to pass a test. At that point, I'm learning to pass the test more than the thing I'm actually writing.
A small example: In Norwegian, we have "en, ei, et" for "one" (or "the" in some situations I suppose).
And you pick the correct one based on... I have no clue what it's based on, I think it's related to the "gender" of the topic/object?
Anyway, 90-99% of the time, I pick the right one, without knowing the rules for which one to use. I "just know" which to use... As my brain has subconsciously learnt the rule... Or what sounds best, I have no idea what my brain does half the time.
And I probably do the same with English.
To this day, I don't know what an adjective is.
Nor do I know what syllables, nouns or adverbs are... I don't need to know them in my everyday life. And I didn't need them to learn English.
I'm not saying they are useless or that you shouldn't learn them - but they aren't always required to learn a language.
Learning the most commonly used words and then going from there really is the best way to go, at least it was for me...
And I suspect this is the case for most people. As far as I know and have seen, this is pretty much how babies learn their first language anyway. From there, just get used to the language.
Hey! This was super inspiring! I can relate to this so much, speaking English as my second language. 100% agree with what u said about associating the English word for the actual object/idea/concept itself rather than associating the English word with the equivalent word in my mother tongue. Love your comment, you sum up my experience of getting to fluent in English so perfectly. Thank you so much 🙂 Hope you progress even further and enjoy learning languages and everything else around you more and more! 😁
HI! ok, so I just wanted to say that I applaud you! I've lived in an English speaking household all of my life took Spanish for four years from middle school to high school, and I barely tapped that place where you stop translating, but then eventually stopped because I wasn't passionate, hated my teacher, and knew that there was no way I was going to pursue language in college. I do the same thing that you do with the "just know" the correct term for what you want to portray to make sense.
Oh btw I turn 20 in a month and have spoken English since I was a kid and still can barely tell you what a noun is, and syllables or adjectives are my best bet. I went to one of the best high schools in my region. don't worry about not knowing the big fancy words, you never need to explain what a verb is (unless you enjoy mad libs) and most English speakers don't know it either.
If you hadn't told m that you "aren't fluent" by school standards I never would have guessed, most of us speak with words we learned in third grade. Nice job on that front!
(btw I'm sure this is rambling on a lot so sorry about that)
And yet your grammar and spelling now is basically perfect. I think you know what a noun is now :p
So if I do this with German, could I become fluent? If so, any more tips?
And that my friends, is a speaker who speaks much better than most speakers. A++ for writing this XD
I learned English with that game: Legend of Zelda and with Secret of Mana. Before, games were not translated to Spanish, so I had a dictionary next to me to understand what I was supposed to look for in the game.
I used FF VII, tatics and Digimon world 1, 2 and 3
I was 6 and my parents would make questions of the game lore, so i had to have it written in portuguese and english.
It felt horrible and games were not that fun, but nowdays i'm so grateful
thats cool af ngl
this is a fascinating video.
I'm into constructed languages and I spend a lot of time wondering how to actually build a new language's grammar from scratch. the 'basic english" method might just help in this goal.
I- I just searched "How to learn a new language" and then looked at my subscriptions and boom. Johny you read my mind or what?
I got your back, switzerland.
Is this the real Switzerland 😳
@@nathan-iz2bq absolutely
Hi 👋 from Switzerland 🇨🇭
Hi from Switzerland 🇨🇭
I teach Italian and it actually made me smile how you mentioned “double object pronouns”, “subjunctive” “irregulars” and “past participles” - definitely among the things my students like the least!😂
That’s a great strategy indeed, and definitely more of a fun one! :)
(Another great tip when it comes to learning a language from 0 is watching cartoons, you learn basic structures and everyday vocabulary. It has helped me a lot in language learning! )
ahhahahaha non immaginavo che questi argomenti dessero così tanti problemi
@@niccolobattistoni1113 sì sì è così! Se non smettono di studiare italiano dopo i pronomi doppi, capisci che vogliono davvero imparare la lingua! 😂
thank you
@Whatever don’t worry, used to that 😉 thankfully not all Italians are like that! Anyways you probably haven’t heard some of our politicians speaking in English...that’s where they need the most help I’d say haha
Totally agree with the watching cartoons/dubbed anime. Me and my sister learned German that way when we were kids, before school. It was our secret language no one in the family understood.
"Get on one of these services and start communicating with a native speaker"
_Logs into VRChat at 4 AM_
But it's fine because it's a decent time for the other guy
I see, you're a man of culture as well. And the world where you will have the most luck is the Japan shrine. During CET nights it tends to be full of Russians, and you will likely find Soviet Pingu parades.
@@fungo6631 Wtf
@@Reforming_LL I even have screenshots.
@@fungo6631 wtf
This is so smart! When you think of how toddlers learn language, it's similar to this. They learn the words and how to say them, they use them with their parents, THEN they go to school.
This video is almost exactly the same as Nathaniel’s just with a videogame metaphor. Right down to the, “I already speak multiple Romance languages but that’s not the point here.” And the problem I have with it is that beginners don’t know how to parse bad word lists, of which many are.
For example, trying to learn all the particles in German... they are ALWAYS on those lists and have multiple meanings depending on context, so it’s useless to try to learn those in a strictly memorization manner. But beginners might not realize that. Learn the most common nouns and verbs, then fill in the other words as you go.
Yea, that's a good disclaimer to add. When I was learning Korean, there are 3/4 types of ways to say something based on politeness and closeness to a person. I could only handle learning the mid-level structure, that is most applicable to all different types of people or situations, but if I hadn't been told that I might've wasted much more time with learning unnecessary ways to say something. So yea, nouns and verbs are definitely the better place to start, then you can add the more functional details as you start to gain more understanding about the structure and grammar.
I think his strategy works well with Chinese. Since Chinese doesn't have the same tense-based system as Western languages, the 1000 words hill is easier to climb and forces you into conversations with natives. Phrases are the only way I've learned grammar because most people, outside of school, can't explain, only the teachers. I was lucky to start my journey with Chinese in a community that speaks it so maybe my observation is flawed.
I agree that western languages would have issues with word lists. If a language has set words, that aren't altered, and aren't heavily influenced by grammar, then his system works. However, I'm a bigger fan of phrase and sentence memorization. You can often place other words you learn later into these memorized phrases and hope you get the point across.
For many european languages, especially the most spoken and the most important ones, there are lots of online resources to help navigate through the most important words.
Besides, the easiest way to learn a new language is probably just consuming entertainment, like youtube or netflix, where there is the possibility to set the language of subtitles.
An example for German might be the original german videos of Kurzgesagt, but based on your interest you are very likely to find your preferred channels.
Doing it this way you automatically will get to know most of the most important words of the language, plus you will also immediately focus on your interests, which might spark further curiosity and a more solid knowledge down the line. A lot of friends and relatives of mine learned english this way and it is way more efficient and less tiresome
@@KidGibson Only issue with sinitic languages is filtering out the redundant western words. a, an, one, he, him, she, her, they, his, hers, theirs... my thousand word list is down to 650 already help!
Someone trying to learn German:
No one, really no one:
Der die das: I'm gonna end this person's whole career
Hi! I'm an opera singer. To do my job, I had to learn a whole lot about a variety of different languages. Opera singers are essentially professional language learners, and it's one of my favourite things about my job!
Learning operas, you obviously memorize quite a bit of vocabulary without learning any grammar rules or sentence structure - it's just words as they were written down in the original repertoire. But the vocabulary in those operas is also usually archaic, and learning Italian from things like Mozart operas is a little like trying to learn English by reading Shakespeare plays.
All this to say, in opera, we have to learn functional language separately from our academic knowledge. While I have a lot of Italian words memorized due to the operas in Italian I've sung, I absolutely could not order food at a café or understand a native speaker if they spoke to me. For a lot of singers I know, formal coursework doesn't work for exactly the reason you point out: the courses are structured linearly from a specific starting point, and even if you do get to the end, singers often don't have much better use of the language than they would if they've just memorized fifty new operas in that language.
What I'm getting at, essentially, is that I've recently come to the exact same conclusion you, Nathaniel, and the US Government in the 40s all came to: that the generally accepted model for ways to learn a language is flawed, and we're all best off distilling languages into their most common, usable, functional words if we want to connect with people.
Making mistakes is okay. Mistakes are fine. Having the ability to really communicate, person to person... that's what vital. And it's the most exciting thing about language learning.
"Here's the map." So here we have vocabulary, and then over here we have vocabulary, and over here we have vocabulary.
Don't forget about the vocabulary
What an exaggeration, there's also some vocabulary to be learned
I could agree but I'm not sure about my vocabulary
Damn you’re a drama queen. Stop it. It’s not just full of vocabulary, it’s also full of past-tense vocabulary
One way to "make it fun" is to watch a film in the language you're trying to learn with the English subtitles on. It's not always a word-for-word translation, but it really does help. You also learn delivery and context of common phrases, slang and jargon by seeing it spoken in a film.
Yes! It's also a really good way to learn some sayings/proverbs and slang :D
Even better if you can switch to your target languages subtitles too. Read along.
ah, soudeska?
This is one way I keep up on my French.
Agree. All I learned about English came through watching movies and TV shows. Sometimes I'm not sure How to express exactly what I'm thinking, but I'll most likely understand what people are saying!
This is how we learn a language as kids, we learn the words then we go to school to learn grammar and such!
You learn grammar naturally as a kid too. The grammar you learn in school is just a standardized/formal grammar, but every child knows how to speak correctly and grammatically. Native speakers by definition cannot speak incorrectly barring some kind of brain disease like Aphasia, etc.
Source: I was a Linguistics Major in College
You basicly go to school to learn that you already know the gramar but you don't know why you know it - so they teach you all that again with unneded teory
I mean yes, but I still don't really understand various tenses. Like what really is the subjunctive tense?
That’s very true. Kids learn basic grammar through cartoons, simple books that are read to them etc (that’s how they learn to conjugate simple verbs), but they mainly focus on vocabulary. Only once they go to school they start learning the grammar.
@@FrancescaDePaolis with my language (Croatian) you need the gramar for even basic conversation - so the majority of our language lessons were focused on recognising various rules that are used and pointing them out
This is really encouraging for us who are in the process! I was in Japan a few years ago to visit my husband’s relatives and it was a week full of charades, smiles and one-worded answers 😂 But we felt strangely so connected and somehow understood one another. I love how you’ve described it all here!!!
I was on a zoom call last week and my mic wasn't working. One of my compatriots razzed me and said "come on! Charades! Make it work!" Little did he know I work with Burmese refugees and spend most days talking with ppl for 8 hours without speaking two meaningful sentences audibly. Crazy how much you can communicate without words when words aren't an option.
Great video.
That's how we learn our mother language as kids. We listen, learn words and then use them to try and communicate.
In traditional school, you forget literally everything after the test
Its forced upon you like most school so you just learn what you need to survive
I learnt Spanish at school and seven years later I can still speak it.
Speak for yourself.
@@RedHair651 i admit it was a bit of an overstatement but the principles of it apply to school in general. Most people totally forget how algebra works after they finish school (or pick whichever subject you like) l.
Unless it is applicable to your adult life then generally my point stands.
@@86samsky We put aside in the back of our mind everything we dont need in our life but we have learned. Did you like math then algebra wont be forgotten and certainly language if you use it. I was taught french and english from 5th to 12th grade. English I started learning on my own and French was taught by school. I still remember the pronunciation rules in french. I still remember that eau and au is pronounced as "o" , ou as "u" and so on but I dont use it is just something that I remember from school. If I were to pick french and learn how to fluently speak it it would be very easy to me.
i still remember the basics of everything school has taught me. What was just nationalism regarding history and what we now know that it wasnt the entire picture of some events. Your point doesnt stand atleast not when it comes to me.
@@s1os2s3 i wasn't insinuating that we all just wipe that memory of french class out. I still remember things like please i live in i like i dont like( only writing in english as i would probably offend someone with my spelling in french).
For some reason the uk system taught us french for 2 years then you choose spanish or german which you do for 2 years then choose to drop the french or chosen second language for the last year. (Might be for the thicko classes like mine😂)
Either way it's a terrible waste of time as i much preferred german but had to do 4 years of french.
I’m an ESL teacher and absolutely! Conversation and audio/visual input (movies, music) is the BEST way to build confidence and start using another language.
Teachers: *Video games are bad!*
Video Games: _Are you intimidated that I can do your job better than you?_
My daughter aced a grade school spelling bee because she played the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. She remembered one of the words because of the Great Deku Tree's dialogue! 😆
Basically this
Everything is bad if you use it badly.
Money, Video games, Food, Actions etc... and it keeps going :D
I've always had a way with words and I blame that on the amount of time I've played video games and been on my computer since I was 5, and as I'm typing this I'm realizing I could do that with my target languages.
I just realized China is banking video games because they don't want western culture to influence their children
I can’t agree to your concept of learning a language...thanks to you I have more confidence now to go forward...thanks a lot
"I've been learning Italian over the last 4 months" Clip of him saying *Lasagna Bolognese*
No, darling. We talk every single class about everything....(jhonny's teacher)
@@margheritalia7783 yeah, it was a joke concerning the timing of Johnnys editing.
My rule when learning a new language is first knowing the curse words. My mom studied Spanish and was capable of having conversations. But when we went to San Sebastian, a guy literally was trying to push her with his car, almost crushing her. She was so angry that she only wanted to scream curse words but she couldn’t and felt even more frustrated and pissed because of that. Since then, the first words I want to know when learning a new language are curse words because they will come in handy at some point.
And if someone start cursing you, you know how to reply, or at least you know they are cursing you 🤣
You can also avoid accidentally saying it when you're trying to say something else
went to middle school with hispanic classmates and those were the only spanish i knew for many years lol, apart from amigo/amiga.
In Japanese you'd better learn how to say excuse me.
Curse words were always the first things we tried to find in our dictionaries at my school lol
the tip of "adding fun" to it is SUCH a good point!! I grew up my entire life being taught (both formally at school and casually at home) mandarin and a chinese dialect, but was always punished if i even made the smallest mistake. Thats why until now, i dont speak it well at all and often forget words; out of both fear of being punished for getting something wrong, or just lack of motivation to get it right. I've only recently gotten slightly better (still need lots of practice tho!) because of talking to my mandarin-speaking friends in mandarin (and not being punished for mistakes lmao), and playing videogames like stardew valley while speaking in mandarin ! awesome video! i learned so much
I stopped going to my chinese private lesson because the pressure is awful, like everyone in my class is already pretty good in chinese but I'm the only one that lags behind. Studying there isn't fun at all, and everytime I make mistake I feel worse. But learning english for me is much easier because all the videogames I played and movies I watched is in english subtitle and it's fun and better than studying chinese, miserably trying to memorize all the chinese characters and the insane intonations.
Surprisingly, it seems revolutionary when talking about adults, despite the fact the same rules apply to us.
Play in education.
As simple as it gets, engagement improves focus. Positive emotion may increase the chances of repeating the act.
I'd like to think that having any emotional connection, preferably positive would improve retention as well.
This video is like an article with an incredibly good summary. In such articles everything is laid out in a very interesting way in the summary, but when you read the rest of the article, nothing new has been written.
"Language isn't math." Me who thinks Latin is like solving math each time you read it.
I think this way in latin too. In other languages, like Italian, the position of words in the phrase tells you what function that word has. With Latin, it doesn't matter if I put a word at the start or in the middle of the phrase: if it's a nominative it's the subject, end of the story.
Latin is like 5+3 = 3+5. Languages where position of words matter are like 5-3 ≠ 3-5. Math has both.
In the case of roman numerals you have to do math before you even get to do the math.
Now I understand why I hated studying Latin so much but had a blast with Spanish. My Spanish teacher spoke Spanish from the first second she entered the classroom and made us have conversations about every day stuff and smalltalk
If I taught Spanish, day 1 would be watching an episode of Danger Mouse in Spanish. Then we'd talk about a few words they said.
This is exactly what my German professor did. Very, very first day he started speaking German. I had a background knowledge of German, so I understood a bit, but everyone in the class was able to learn regardless. By the end of the semester, we were all able to have basic conversations with each other about a lot of every day things.
I can relate to this. Learned Latin years ago. Sure, you know the declension and conjugation of "Agricola Arat", but you can't speak the damn language to each other.
Studying Spanish now, and it's fun how i can now buy stuff from a store or buy food using spanish.
son: yesterday I yeeted an apple. dad: yes son, you did, my head still hurts.
Wachusay?
@@clemkadiddlehopper7705 throw apple hard, hit head. Very pain, oof ouch owie
Actually the past tense of Yeet is Yote 🤣
@@sneakretster Past perfect is yote, this would be normal imperfect I think
He/she/it yott
My favorite language course has been Pimsleur. They get you immediately speaking and understanding conversations.
This is the approach I took with Japanese learning. I moved to Japan 3 years ago, didn't know a single word.
I now speak/read/write well enough to express myself and understand others. Objective wasn't to study Japanese, it was to communicate with those around me.
Children learn to speak a language without language courses, I try to do like them, by consuming content (books for kids, news in easy language, tv shows, games, etc.)
you can't learn japanese by watching anime and reading manga, bud
@@_ikako_ as an urdu speaker, japanese is soo damn easy.the only thing that got in my way is KANJI!!!!
@@_ikako_ I would try watching anime for very very young kids, with very very basic words. Then I trust my brain to do the connection between words and meaning. And I would do it every day (aka spartan method 🙂)
@@StannYo Like kids you'll need to speak in that language with someone too
@@_ikako_ it’s kind of possible. I learned fluent Italian when I was 3 by just playing with other kids and going to school there. I never had any kind of course or grammar class. It the same with English. My English may not be perfect but I can speak write and understand 99% of most books and videos. I did that by just watching a lot of English movies and TH-cam etc.
This method was how I was taught Japanese, in Japan. Including memorising reading and writing these words. With the technical elements of the language gradually introduced later. Vocabulary is everything when learning a language.
I had the same experience with japanese, at first they teach you many words and only after some time you start with grammar to put them together. Very funny and very easy
I had a teacherfor japanese when I was there and thats what they do, teach you the baisc words, grammar and kana, and it worked, but I was also placed in an environment when I had to learn the language since not all your school teacrs are gonna give you concessions
How should I keep learning japanese. I started one month ago and I know some vocabulary, but that cant be the way, do you have some advice or Plan how to learn japanese in a productive way.
@@balkanmadnessmadeinaustria5837 you need to do excercise. Learn hiragana and katakana, learn words, do quizes and tests to see if you are truly studying.
Watch japanese media content meant for childrens so that you can expand your vocabulary naturally. When you know some common words and phrases that are usually spoken by natives you will eventually need to learn the grammar, but you will find out that japanese is not really all that difficult compared to English.
Thanks for the advice until now I didnt Focus to much on japanese Media, but certainly Im gonna do it from now on. Is it helpful in the meaning grammer wise, that I speak German and a slavic langauge, is japanese in its own unique way more complicated or less complicated, than lets say german or a slavic language?