📲 The app I use to learn languages: tinyurl.com/2yybxh88 🆓 My 10 FREE secrets to language learning: bit.ly/3TTswWm ❓How do you like to learn vocabulary? Let me know in the comments!
1- Learn whole sentences instead of words 2 - Study conversations about your domain of interest and if possible try to recite them (it don’t have to be perfect) Words learnt this way cannot be forgotten, and you will sound much more natural by mimicking natives sentences.
Yeah, and then somebody comes along, strikes a conversation with you, changes a line different to the conversations youd ve listening to and they will throw you away 😂😂😂😂
@@greyLeicester You need to know what’s in the sentence, that’s obvious. Knowing idiomatic turns , will make you anticipate what they will say, being more aware of any deviation. And for Japanese for instance, they have very standardized questions/answers, unless you are a close friend. So it’s really relevant for this language to have those core conversations known by heart.
I'm a police officer in Brasil, and hope to learn other languages to visit more countries and know many cultures. This channel helps me to understand how I can improve my english, thanks!
The faster or the most efficient method to acquire a new language is living with native speakers 😊 The 2nd one is reading. See the kids example, they learn naturaly, without studying. Only listening and seeing adults speaking and their behavior. In other words associating the object/image to the concept/word
@@wnildsongomes7984Not necessarily. I lived for two years with native speakers in Montreal. 30 years later my French improved far more in England with self study.
@@StillAliveAndKicking_looks like most people are this way if you look how many are in other countries for years and know just a little of the local language. I think the focus is the key point. Even when doing the "field job" we need to put effort on understand and imitate.
Advice: 1. Study throughout the day and not all at once. 2. If you are not mentally able to study for more than an hour, then study that one hour and spend some time watching a series (like an anime) in the target language. The latter will improve your listening skills and familiarize you with more vocabulary and expressions.
This has worked for me. Imagine you're watching 6 months 1 hour a day in the language you learn and imagine you're not doing it. The former has lots of hours of listening compared to the latter and is accustomed to listening to it
@@NeonBeeCat that's the whole point! Children learn a lot of vocabulary through series even though they don't understand the bulk of it. You could use a second phone to note the words but subtitles will distract you from actively listening. Further advice: watch a series that you already watched in your language. You knowing the plot and some scenes allow to extrapolate the meaning of a said word.
@@NeonBeeCatRight, and to make it comprehensible learn some vocab along with everything else. You aren’t guaranteed to figure out everything just by watching. Children with their native language have an advantage because they have people showing them the things they listen to each day, interacting with them,…etc. If they see a “burger” on TV, most likely their parents will hand them a “burger” and call it a “burger” too. That is comprehensible input. When you watch some foreign language video you might not notice what the word for “burger” is and that will be your only chance for a reminder unless you have people to speak with as random reminders or you already learned the meaning before hand.
Comme c'est dommage que vous ayez choisi la langue d'un pays qui sème la terreur de par le monde. Le russe vous engouffrera dans un monde de mensonges, de violence et de tueries
@@going2sleep Thank you. I had the same reaction as the person that asked the question. For someone who is creating content meant to help people communicate on a basic level the presentation was too meandering. I suppose it would appeal to folks that like to find the message, like opening a puzzle box, but you are going to lose a lot of people if you are almost finished with your video and you have not yet explained what you want to get across.
He literally said that he practices talking about topics he's interested in, rather than studying flashcards. It's better to get good at actively pulling out words from your mind, testing to see if they work or not and then strengthening your model of the language.
It may seem easier, but it's not as useful as a constant stream of new material. I struggled with German by learning lists of vocabulary and never acquired much fluency, whereas with French I've taken a completely different approach, watching lots of videos and reading online news. Although it's messier and does not provide the same sense of clear-cut targets, progress is swifter.
Haha “Vocabulary is power” Sir, you are absolutely right. When I felt bored studying vocabulary, my English teacher told me “Hey, living abroad is like living on a battlefield, and vocabularies are bullets. How could you survive without bullets?”
Thanks man for your work! You really make me inspired. Sometimes when I'm frustrated and hopeless because of my failures I just watch your videos and understand it's just part of learning process which I need to accept.
The learning vs acquisition divide is similar to how we taught AIs to use language. At first we tried to teach computers explicit grammar rules and lists of vocabulary. But language is too complicated and contextual and that approach didn’t work very well. Now we have far more complex neural networks that cannot be directly programmed - they must learn language iteratively by repeated exposure to vast quantities of training material from the real world: Input. During the training they encounter a word like “love” used in millions of different contexts, and somewhere in the network a cluster of neurons begins to ‘acquire’ the concept of “love”, linking it to related words and concepts. Each training pass shapes the model ever so subtlely, until something like understanding emerges. Every time I do some focused listening in my target language, I imagine something similar happening in my brain.
This is how I was taught Spanish with people around me vs when I was shoved with grammar taking French. Despite not speaking Spanish for 5 years my sentences followed much better than I did in france
Agreed 💯 I have discovered this as well. And I really enjoy starting with a rather complex text and watching my brain adapt and learn through repeated exposure to the same material. It's mesmerizing.
Sometimes, I notice a word in Arabic that I never noticed before but I don't have enough context to guess the meaning. Later, I encounter that same word in different contexts and I remember where I heard it first. If I've heard the word in three different contexts, I can start triangulating the meaning. I know it is within the confines of that triangle.
Oh my gosh, I'm an English language teacher who grew up in an environment where people said, "Would have went." and "Should have went." I love that you used that example. My partner is also a language teacher and despite frequent corrections and my knowledge of grammar and modals, I STILL slip into this regional grammar usage.
I deeply appreciate your contribution to these conversations, Steve. I'm both a language learner and a music teacher, and your thoughts have benefitted both of those pursuits for me. Thank you!
I think some deliberate vocabulary practice is really helpful for complete beginners. Learning common nouns and verbs with some flash cards can be really helpful to get started with basic reading.
Is very difficult learn a new language however we should to study every day for improve our skills in this language is very important the dedication and our motivation
@@xdarie0 IT is very difficult to learn a new language; however, we should -to- study everyday -for- TO improve our skills in this language. Motivation and dedication is very important
These videos always encourage and inspire me, thanks Steve! I recently increased the intensity of my Japanese study, I have a 2-3 hour-long conversations a day in Japanese. And outside of that, I'm reading and watching things in Japanese. It's a lot of fun but burnout feels like it's on the horizon. After watching these videos about language learning, it always reinvigorates me and pushes that horizon further away.
But Chomsky has never said we don't need to learn. The idea of instinct and innate ability we all have seems quite solid. Of course, we need to learn and expose ourselves. I think you're approaching different concepts.
@@хейтер-д4з This is good! For me the simplest way to get any kind of word base in a language is to play on the Drops application. I knew it was a child that someday I'd be a world traveler but I had no idea that learning Russian scripts Russian words would be so easy. After that step Clozemaster gets your next through the door. Right here I would include links to Drops and Clozemaster but TH-cam SHADOW BLOCKS LINKS DOESNT ALLOW STICKER OR GIF TH-cam NEEDS TO GET WITH THE TIMES AND ALLOW US TO POST SCREENSHOTS!!
I do not know how about the other languages, but when it comes to arabic learning with doulingo- a lot of things there are not correct, especially when it comes to pronunciation. So don’t start with doulingo, you will learn the non correct things (I guess referring to Chinese and other languages the same problem ) - I would prefer other tools - especially for beginners
I'm a newbie here and don't know much about Chomsky's work. What is your understanding of his theory and how would you describe its mischaracterization here?
Language Jones does a great clarification (th-cam.com/video/s0WoNNdfjUA/w-d-xo.html). But tldw: the theory is that humans have a set baseline "kit" of possible natural language grammar rules in which we have built natural language. As varied and complicated as we can imagine theoretical grammar rules, in real life humans tend towards a limited set of possibilities.
@@joshuameadows3166 I second the pointer to Language Jones. In short Chomsky’s idea is that there are a limited number of innate parameters for grammar that can be mixed and matched to get the variety of languages.
Oh, and the mischaracterization here is that it is suggested UG is incompatible with grammatical variety. There are genuine problems with UG, but the kind of surface level variety language learners encounter isn’t one of them, or at least just saying “look variety, therefore no UG” is oversimplified to the point of being misleading. Note that Krashen, whom Steve idolizes, is a Chomskian!
I've always been a good speller, but I always had to write it down first. I would then look at it and know if it was right or wrong. I'm sure many people have similar experiences, whether it be music or dress sense. Once you've had enough meaningful interaction with something, you just know when something is off.
This is a very interesting and informative video. It does raise some questions. For example, Steven Kaufmann is the language equivalent of a star NHL player. Would a beginner skater wish to copy the methods used by a star NHL player?
Trying to play like a pro right away isn't smart. Following a pro's advice for beginners might be. Especially when the pro is furnishing science that seems to apply generally to all humans, not just pros.
@@mellamanborrego8299 There are many that claim that Chomsky’s ideas are science. I do happen to believe, based on reading about the subject, that Stephen Krashen is on the right track, though I’m not sure how convincing the evidence is.
Very comprehensive presentation! I received it in the context of a person who is functionally fluent in a second.language that was haphazardly acquired, and acquired through a personal relationship. Your discussion resonated with my experience and clarified my plans to learn German and Arabic, and improve my Italian. I would add that in my relatively strong second language (French), writing has been an important means of actually situating myself in the language. My greatest obstacle in French is speaking English with French words. Writing about various topics in French is an opportunity to enter into the idiomatic nuance of the language.
I’ve ben following Steve videos and advice for quite some time and I have great admiration for him. But I must say that the presentation of Chomsky here was a rather gross misrepresentation. His theories can obviously be discussed (as they are) as well as defended (as they are), but on a theoretical level, without simplification or caricature. And to qualify his views as simply “ideology” is just, I’m sorry, preposterous.
Love from Pakistan🇵🇰! Sir, I highly admire your patience and consistency with the languages. Can't wait to see you start hindi. Learning hindi will give you extra advantage to understand my native language urdu, since both languages are mutually intelligible and both pakistanis and Indians can communicate with each other without any difficulty.
My problem is that listening to input does not teach me the details. I learn to understand that ‘Ich fahre’ means I drive, but when I want to use it, I can’t remember if it’s Ich fahre or Ich fährt or whatever. Flash cards help teach me the details.
Strange, but I think it depends on your native language partially at least. I never had problems with German verb conjugation but the only novel thing for me (and a hard one too) was the distinction between ihr (you to a group of “du”s) and Sie (“you” used with a stranger OR a group of strangers). So, habt ihr vs haben Sie was really a pain in my language learning ass
Nice video, but the comment on universal grammar was completely unnecessary and out of context. All theories are ideologies in some sense, they have their basic assumptions. The point made doesn’t disprove Chomsky’s idea of UG…
For a fuller discussion see this article. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar. I used the Chomsky false theory as a lead into how language rules are in fact learned, since they are not innate. "people learn about probabilistic patterns of word distributions in their language, rather than hard and fast rules (see Distributional hypothesis). For example, children overgeneralize the past tense marker "ed" and conjugate irregular verbs as if they were regular, producing forms like goed and eated and correct these deviancies over time.[33] It has also been proposed that the poverty of the stimulus problem can be largely avoided, if it is assumed that children employ similarity-based generalization strategies in language learning, generalizing about the usage of new words from similar words that they already know how to use.[34]
I didn't disprove Chomsky. I just pointed out that it is not a valid theory of how we learn languages. Chomsky has not proven anything. There is nothing to disprove.
Steve, I think you have misunderstood Chomsky's universal grammar. It's not that every child automatically knows what's correct or not (which is obviously false), but rather that every child has an innate set of grammatical possibilities from which to choose those that are most likely to fit the language he is learning. This means that he has a very restricted set of options from which to build his own internal grammar. Something I discovered is that everybody reinvents the language he is learning, whether it's his first or not. He creates a version of the language which is unique to himself, although extremely similar to those of other speakers of the same language. I accept as evidence of this reinvention the rebracketing of some words, e.g., "a napron" to "an apron" or "a nadder" to "an adder".
If each child creates Grammer that is completely unique, as you stated, similar but different, then it means that there are no predetermined grammatical rules. If such rules were in place then the grammatical understandings would be identical or nearly impossible to differentiate.
This is great advice, I'm currently working on Arabic. I'm learning classical so I can speak to anyone then I will work on local dialect depending on where I'm at in the world. So if learning has a lot to do with exposure would it be beneficial to learn words and phrases and listen to podcasts in Arabic to increase my exposure?
Arabic has a very regular writing system when diacritics is used, however without diacritics is highly ambiguous because those diacritic marks are for all short vowels, which are only three but of high grammatical value. any learner should read text and learn words with diacritic marks first then the context will solve any issues later when the core vocabulary and grammar are acquired.
How do you immerse yourself in the language to begin with though? If you only know a few phrases and words how can you watch TV etc in that language and get anything from it? I'm learning arabic as well BTW
The nickname for that is "scuba diving", because it's a sort of "unnatural" hack that allows you to be fully immersed in something that you'd normally find too difficult, the same as a scuba tank helps you to be immersed even if you can't hold your breath for more than a minute.
I wasn't an emigrant but I learned English and my native language together because of the English courses, games and films. To this day, I remember the English alphabet better than in my language😅. And yes, I received many compliments about my reading skills.
The second myth is not actually a myth. It is absolutely true that the huge amount of language data children acquire drives most of language acquisition, but correction is actually very common. The idea that correction is uncommon has been taken basically for granted in linguistics for decades (ironically mostly to support Chomsky's arguments about universal grammar), but more recent research that actually collected large corpora of child-directed speech discovered that correction is actually pervasive. It's so common and normalized that people don't even realize how often they do it. That said, Chomsky's universal grammar theory is not so stupid that he didn't realize that certain things are correct in some languages and not others.
How do you explain that children of immigrants, if they are young enough, just naturally learn from their peers,. You think all of their errors can be corrected by teachers?
@@Thelinguist Definitely not. The point isn't that correction is necessary. It clearly isn't. And Chomsky's argument about "poverty of the stimulus" has always been very silly. It's easy to explain how data leads children to expectations that are subverted by further data - no correction necessary to obtain negative evidence. BUT it is just a fact that correction is also pretty common. Actual data collection shows it is substantially more common than Chomsky et al insisted.
lol I’ll go ahead and tell you that my parents are Turks and I grew up in Russia since the age 1 and ironically me and my siblings were the ones to correct our parents and get pissed when they mispronounced words when reading us fairytales in Russian. Now looking back I think of that moment when teachers would praise me for writing waaay more correct than other (Russian) kids, although my 2 other siblings were more like other kids in the class. And then I used to read our Russian literature textbook at home about poets and their brief bio (2 pages) and then to my and my Russian teacher’s surprise I started reciting them by heart word for word(!). She’d knock on the door whenever I had another class and take me to parallel classes, put me in front of a whole class and have me recite any bio kids would select from the book and I’d recite it. Funny thing is, that was the case when I learned effortlessly but after I was pleased by all these applause, I wanted to do the same with other textbooks, like history for example, since I loved this subject too. And it didn’t work! What worked many time on its own did NOT work when I was trying to learn the texts deliberately. But I digressed. So, yes, I am someone who wasn’t exposed to the language at home and still managed to learn it better than my “native” peers. So, there was no way my mom or dad would correct us 😅
INTERESTING about difficulty reading non-Arabic words written in Arabic. I find the same thing with Greek. A word like cellotape( on Hary Potter's glasses). written in Greek letters totally stumped me, whereas I can read real Greek words with ease, even if I don't know what they mean.
In Lacanian theory, the place in the mind where language is constantly maintained is the "unconscious". Some readers of Lacan say that the unconscious is a stage on which language snippets are constantly played (re-enacted) and conflicts in the chains of signification are resolved - much like a rebus machine. That would explain our inclination for prediction and our ability to spontaneously react (in language) to social situations.
Studying words in isolation does work, though. This is widely known and accepted among experienced language learners. You learn incomparably faster when you combine deliberate learning with naturalistic methods.
@@KnightOfEternity13 People who use purely naturalistic methods consistently get worse results than people who mix it with deliberate learning strategies. Even Kaufmann himself used a more balanced approach when he learned his core languages that he is fluent in.
Of course it wasn't just me but as I feel that comment as a precise response to my comment in the other video I'd add that you are thinking of ANKI in the wrong way. I don't even try to remember anything when doing ANKI. Mostly following you own advice by the way. In a language maybe like Arabic, and certainly in languages like Thai, Vietnamese and even Japanese and Korean, if you are not living there, there are just TOO many words and, as you've pointed out, VERY LITTLE time in a day to be exposed to all the words you need, all the time you need, with the frequency you need. ANKI is a way to speed up the process. I use ANKI to recognize words while doing immersion. The problem is in doing immersion in such languages you'll for a LONG TIME not recognize over 90% of the words used (specially with just one to two hours a day) so, therefore, you can't read or watch jack s&& in the language and searching for ALL the words you don't know it's just too boring, gruesome and will take you HOURS to read one or 2 paragraphs. It's just too slow. ANKI will make you able to recognize more words during immersion as the weeks, months and YEARS pass by. And, combined with immersion, will give you the repetition you need so it goes to your long term memory to AT LEAST recognize it, to go to your PASSIVE vocabulary, for when you read and watch things in the language. And I suspect the SAME will be true in HINDI. So I'll follow your progress in Hindi without doing it.
Well, that's just wrong. First of all, with modern tools it's not so hard to look for every word when reading. I can't see how it's more boring than doing flashcards. You can also always start with texts, intended for beginners which don't have so many new words. And finally, I'll teach you a secret: you don't actually need to search ALL the words in a vocabulary to read and learn from the context. It looks as if you somehow just afraid to begin reading, and feel that you need to become "well-prepared" to do that, while it's totally possible to do that from the very start and don't bother with such things, and win from it. You will soon notice that the basic words are so frequent, so they are fast to learn anyway, with Anki or not.
@@KnightOfEternity13 I think searching for each and every word is MORE boring than doing flashcards. and I want t watch and rad things made by natives for natives, not boring stuff made for learners. I also think ANKI is WAYYY less boring than than reading bullshit made for learners. And probably you missed the context of my comment and the last video. He was talking about how much vocabulary you need in Arabic to watch and read stuff. That with the same amount of vocabulary he can enjoy way more things in Persian. So it's the same as learning Japanese (he learned but he lived in Japan for 10 years, it's different, so much so he gave up on KOREAN) Vietnamese, Thai and other languages from Southeast Asia. I'm Brazilian. I didn't use ANKI to learn English, nor Italian, but learning JAPANESE to the point you can ACTUALLY b fluent in Japanese without ANKI even studying 3-8 hours a day (let alone just 1 hour)? That will take you than years at minimum! same, and even more, I'd say, for Vietnamese, in which I'm in my fourth year. Ad Mandarin that I just started. I'm talking about sitting and watching the evening news in Vietnamese in the VTV4 channel comfortably. Just too many words, just too many sounds (not even counting the 6 tones) to be able just to HEAR the different sounds in Vietnamese without ANKI helping you. So much so he only did Chinese because he studied FULL TIME (and also did flashcards back then, he says) and for Japanese he LIVED in Japan. The only difficult language so far he did AT HOME is Russian really. Maybe Russian isn't so hard as those other ones. From his experience with Korean and Arabic, it reinforced my belief that you almost NEED ANKI for such languages. Otherwise it will take you more than a decade and read and watch something MEAINGFUL, made by adults for adults.
@@KnightOfEternity13 Remember that he FIALED at Koran too. and he was already fluent in Japanese, which I'm now, and would give him a headstart in Korean. Japanese and Mandarin he had favorable circumstances. This of just listening and reading just one hour a day with a reputable difficult language for Westerners he ONLY did with RUSSIAN (the other Slavic languages is because he already was pretty good at Russian). And I'm predicting (I may be wrong) he will have the same problem in HINDI, despite its relations with Caucasian languages. In this part of the world" where I'm learning languages it's a while different beast my friend. As I said I neve used ANKi for English or Italian, and would never use it. But going to East Asia and southeast Asia? Even HIM, Kaufnan, so successful otherwise, is feeling the difference.
@@KnightOfEternity13 PS: Luca Lampariello who also is against ANKI and have a very interesting method for learning also admits he failed with Japanese. Going from the West to tis part of the world if way harder than an American learning French, or even Russian. Saying "just start reading" for Japanese. Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Mandarin, Cantonese and the likes, with all due respect is just BS. You don't even know what a tall order t is when you can't even read the script or listen to the different sounds in the language. You start with FOUR complete different sounds in the language (again, not even counting tones here) sounding the SAME to you.
@@JohnnyLynnLee Well, I've learned Japanese exactly just by doing reading from the start, and have never felt I lost anything of value. Your excuses? Maybe, you should just stop learning so many languages at once. Or Anki would not help you anyway. But honestly, just do what you want. If you find mindlessly going again and again through cards more interesting than reading a beginner content, your brain probably works differently and my advices can't help you.
Just found your channel Steve, very interesting. I am learning Spanish for work and I am moving from the uSA to the Dominican this year. When I was at university studying music we use NASA accelerated learning techniques (used when a complex series of events or procedures are needed ) where you practice for 1 minute, break 30 seconds practice the next phrase for 1 minute break 30 secs etc. then after 45 mins complete break for 15 minutes. Doing that for every scale, song, riff , technique in all the different styles keeps the brain in positive learning mode. (the first and last minute of your practice, in between that does nothing) That deals with the brain needing repetition but also novelty.. Repeated every day you suddenly found you had learned.
“It is far more difficult for me to read a word written in the Arabic alphabet which is not a word…it might be a foreign word….” I can definitely relate to this with Japanese. Reading words in Katakana is sometimes a pain and I find it kind of a drag…it’s not because I don’t know Japanese, but it just clearly feels like borrowed words don’t belong to the language….because they don’t…they feel, no pun intended, foreign…. (Of course, Katakana is used for more than just borrowed words like onomatopoeias and emphasis) As far as low vs high frequency vocab, also feel high frequency is just as important as low frequency vocab…the way I see it is: if I find it in my reading or listening, chances are I’ll see it again. Exposure is always more important than rot memorization…but when you’re a beginner in a language that is extremely different to your own, anki just becomes a necessity to do it at least for very few words daily….but a learner has to be conscious enough to know when anki isn’t effective anymore…as nobody can learn an entire language, at some point anki needs to be dropped. After you’re advanced enough, you will pick up new words from context and sometimes you can even infer the meaning based on the context and won’t even need to look it up.
@@paulwalther5237 True, but that’s only the case with Katakana… I also read and watch a lot of stuff with Sino Japanese in it since I also like the chinese culture……in there they have nouns made up of just kanji which when you read it it just feels weird, and sometimes some nouns just appear in the dictionary as the way you refer to something in the chinese culture..so it’s very specific…but my point is that it’s not just Katakana used to describe things of different cultures. a lot of times such content does have furigana…but not always…also sometimes you see kanji used for names of people but in “furigana” they have an entirely different pronunciation in katakana that would not be how you would read that character at all…at least it’s not common onyomi for that character, but instead it’s the actual chinese pronunciation of that character or group of characters (I know as I watch donghua/CDramas with Chinese audio and Japanese subs so when they say the name it matches what the reading is in the subs for that kanji) I do think katakana is a blessing because while I was a beginner it made it easier to remember a lot of words that sounded similar to english…I didn’t really have to use anki for such words. But now I honestly just wish Japanese had less borrowed words (like, say, Chinese…..where they have a word for everything. It’s more to memorize, but in the end all words feel like they belong to the language)
I am just starting to learn Japanese and knowing when I have enough to try and expose myself to Japanese media without being overwhelmed is a balancing act. I opened up monster hunter portable 3rd for example and found tons of Kanji I dont recognize, overall, fairly overwhelming! I guess I should start with basic graded reader stories, or an anki vocab deck first.
@@ridleyroid9060 Japanese was painfully slow for me but my addiction to anime saw me through 😂. I think both the graded reader and Anki are good ideas. I hear good things about Satori reader. I got started by taking classes.
Dear Mr. Kaufman. I think I read a mistake in French subtitles at 12:32. I think the translation of "eventually" is not "éventuellement", but "finalement". But I may be wrong myself.
6:31 The dominant hemisphere processes language, it is the left hemisphere in 97% of cases. Visuospatial skills such as mental rotation or perception of faces seem more linked to the right hemisphere, while processes involved in numbering involve the left hemisphere more than the right.
What views want is to create a program to learn language using pareto method. 80/20. Ready for apply. Explication of what or why doesn't help views. It not useful. How or not how. Only waste time to listen.
My god…he can barely PRONOUNCE “vocabulary”. Rather than grammar, maybe we should study what exactly happens to people when they reach 70 years? What is this slurring that occurs? Post debate thoughts, I suppose?
Large language models (LL!s) are the new type of AI that has become a huge buzz word. That is the type of AI that predicts the next word. Other types of AIs don’t, even though there are many that use deep learning, which was inspired by the way that neural connections work in the brain. I do wonder whether the language processing part of our brain works like an LLM or not?
I'm russian. Can you teach me to understand and speak English? I want to work more and meet and make friends with different people. I feel limited myself without a fluent understanding English. USA 🇺🇲
Hello sir. I'm learning French and I want to improve my English, but I always think that I don't utilize the correct method to learn. Sometimes I stress with a lot a vocabulary and grammatical rules.
My basic problem is that I am learning german language. I have cleared A2 level as well as one module of B1 level (writing) but the problem is that can't even remember the A1 vocabulary may be because of being lazy and not working enough on each word.
Does it really matter just do everything from passive to focused learning/immersion. You'll get more and more understanding. Open your mouth and you'll get better at fluency. Believe you can learn. There is at least one comment on every video about these silly argumentative discussions.
From my personal experience and those I know, his claim that immigrants read better than natives is falce. I came to USA at age of six. While I don't struggle, I hesitate on certain sounds and tones
In my opinion, learning a new language takes time and requires both active and passive learning. Active recall is also a great way to remember the things we have learned better. Spaced repetition is also essential to learning. Combining all these learning strategies is a great way to help one become fluent in a language.
Man, what is your education? You've learned several languages, and you think that you are also a kind of a scientist and propose your theories about language learning? It is pretty presumptuous.
I have written your company asking for an explanation of how the system works, and I have not received a reply. That's why I have not used the free trial. I would be willing to pay but the interface is quite confusing. Perhaps I wrote the wrong person, could you direct me to the correct one? Thank you.
It's like a library of audio with scipts. While you listen, you can press on words you don't know. The explanation pops up & that word is saved and marked in a different color. Later on you can put all the words you don't know to the flashcard. You can also see how many words in the text you don't know. You can import your audio and scripts yourself too. Just try it for a month.
Any form of prediction, including a quiz activates it and triggers learning when failed to recall it. But reading or speaking costs each a lot of time to look up the word. And if I don't look it up it just gets nowhere.
I think what you said about consuming a great variety of content to make learning languages effective and enjoyable is correct. But I think that is only true once you have reached a certain level, e.g. B1. When I only have A1 or A2 level in a language, I find vocabulary drills a necessary and efficient duty to learn the basic vocabulary. I find example sentences related to the vocabularies also very useful. Furthermore, pronunciation audio and possibly images for each vocabulary are useful in my opinion.
I’ve been studying Portuguese for 9.5 years now and I’ve visited Brasil 18 times but I can’t read or converse yet and I have to translate everything into English to understand. Even basic words that I’ve known for years don’t mean anything to me until I translate them one at a time. It prevents me from understanding and conversing. I practice every day with my girlfriend who only speaks Portuguese and we’ve been practicing for 6.5 years now but I can only make out an occasional word which I then have to translate. I need to find a way to learn and understand Portuguese without translating everything. Tests show that I know over 20,000 words but they all need to be translated.
@@patfromamboyYou need to train it, like watching Brazilian videos without making the effort to understanding, only to recognize the words. For example, you hear "gato" and, instead of thinking "gato = cat", just think "gato"(maybe also 🐈, but not the English word).
@@lucassantossj I’ve already been watching videos. Some with subtitles and some just watching. For years but I still can’t understand what people are saying. I study and practice every day and have for 9.5 years now but I can’t understand what people are saying. I’ve visited Brasil 18 times. Thanks for the help!
I have serious trouble comprehending your very low level of mastery considering the many years of learning, practising on a daily basis with a native (your girlfriend) travelling to Brezil twice every year during the last 9 years. True, you must Stop translating every single word and understand the context of what is being said. It is not important to understand every single word! And then repeat simple conversations so that they enter your brain !!! Only this way you will progress!!!! I am surprised you have not lost your courage in the meantime!!! I am 75 years old, German, speak and teach English, speak fluent French, and intermediate Italian and Spanish, but the latter two took me less than half the time you took...... you need to think of a better learning system/approach!!!! GOOD LUCK!!!
I have a cousin that learned English from her mom, HInidi from her dad and Spanish from her nanny all before she was 8 years old. I guarantee she wasn't taught any grammer along the way.
📲 The app I use to learn languages: tinyurl.com/2yybxh88
🆓 My 10 FREE secrets to language learning: bit.ly/3TTswWm
❓How do you like to learn vocabulary? Let me know in the comments!
😅😮😮😅😅
😅😊Z,
1- Learn whole sentences instead of words
2 - Study conversations about your domain of interest and if possible try to recite them (it don’t have to be perfect)
Words learnt this way cannot be forgotten, and you will sound much more natural by mimicking natives sentences.
It makes sense
Yeah, and then somebody comes along, strikes a conversation with you, changes a line different to the conversations youd ve listening to and they will throw you away 😂😂😂😂
@@greyLeicester You need to know what’s in the sentence, that’s obvious. Knowing idiomatic turns , will make you anticipate what they will say, being more aware of any deviation.
And for Japanese for instance, they have very standardized questions/answers, unless you are a close friend. So it’s really relevant for this language to have those core conversations known by heart.
(It doesn't have)
@@greyLeicester That's not what @michelpetrus is saying at all.
I'm a police officer in Brasil, and hope to learn other languages to visit more countries and know many cultures. This channel helps me to understand how I can improve my english, thanks!
Boa sorte, obrigado pelo seu serviço no nosso país 🙏
me too
Nice, I am learning Portuguese! Foda se nego😅🤙
Your English is pretty good! Congratulations and the best of luck in your journey!
Eu estou esquecendo português
I learn faster by experience than studying
The faster or the most efficient method to acquire a new language is living with native speakers 😊
The 2nd one is reading.
See the kids example, they learn naturaly, without studying. Only listening and seeing adults speaking and their behavior. In other words associating the object/image to the concept/word
You’d learn even faster by combining experience with studying
@@wnildsongomes7984Not necessarily. I lived for two years with native speakers in Montreal. 30 years later my French improved far more in England with self study.
@@StillAliveAndKicking_looks like most people are this way if you look how many are in other countries for years and know just a little of the local language. I think the focus is the key point. Even when doing the "field job" we need to put effort on understand and imitate.
No you don't
Advice:
1. Study throughout the day and not all at once.
2. If you are not mentally able to study for more than an hour, then study that one hour and spend some time watching a series (like an anime) in the target language. The latter will improve your listening skills and familiarize you with more vocabulary and expressions.
This has worked for me. Imagine you're watching 6 months 1 hour a day in the language you learn and imagine you're not doing it. The former has lots of hours of listening compared to the latter and is accustomed to listening to it
True but isn't language learning about comprehensible input? What if I just don't understand anything while watching the series?
@@NeonBeeCat that's the whole point! Children learn a lot of vocabulary through series even though they don't understand the bulk of it. You could use a second phone to note the words but subtitles will distract you from actively listening.
Further advice: watch a series that you already watched in your language. You knowing the plot and some scenes allow to extrapolate the meaning of a said word.
@@NeonBeeCatRight, and to make it comprehensible learn some vocab along with everything else. You aren’t guaranteed to figure out everything just by watching. Children with their native language have an advantage because they have people showing them the things they listen to each day, interacting with them,…etc. If they see a “burger” on TV, most likely their parents will hand them a “burger” and call it a “burger” too. That is comprehensible input. When you watch some foreign language video you might not notice what the word for “burger” is and that will be your only chance for a reminder unless you have people to speak with as random reminders or you already learned the meaning before hand.
Yes man. I totally agree with you. And I recomend studying using material that you love. This will help to keep you motivated during the process.
Above and beyond the great advice, Steve just inspires me to keep going.
That's why I keep coming back to his channel.
Same. Steve is a big influence in my journey to acquire languages
Looking forward to learning Russian and German ❤🇷🇺🇩🇪
Beautiful languages
J'ai 69 ans et j ai commencé l'etude du russe. Merci pour vos précieux conseils qui me permettent de trouver les bonnes stratégies d'apprentissage.
Успехов
Удачи!
Вы молодец! Привет из Кыргызстана 🇰🇬
les dents non peut souvire, le borleaux des les l'ouilles dans poulez
Comme c'est dommage que vous ayez choisi la langue d'un pays qui sème la terreur de par le monde. Le russe vous engouffrera dans un monde de mensonges, de violence et de tueries
Ok. 16 minutes later... Do WHAT instead? I didn't catch your main point. Heard a lot of myths and what not to do.
12:26 Prefer meaningful conversations not deliberate memorization.
@@going2sleep Thank you. I had the same reaction as the person that asked the question. For someone who is creating content meant to help people communicate on a basic level the presentation was too meandering. I suppose it would appeal to folks that like to find the message, like opening a puzzle box, but you are going to lose a lot of people if you are almost finished with your video and you have not yet explained what you want to get across.
He literally said that he practices talking about topics he's interested in, rather than studying flashcards.
It's better to get good at actively pulling out words from your mind, testing to see if they work or not and then strengthening your model of the language.
Use word frequency lists to prioritise vocabulary
it’s easier to learn vocabulary directly than to continually look for ways to learn vocabulary
Feel the same, i don't understand correctly what this video is about
There are plenty videos with the same title on Steve's channel
It may seem easier, but it's not as useful as a constant stream of new material. I struggled with German by learning lists of vocabulary and never acquired much fluency, whereas with French I've taken a completely different approach, watching lots of videos and reading online news. Although it's messier and does not provide the same sense of clear-cut targets, progress is swifter.
@@naclaski99 Did you translate every unknown word or just without adding it into Anki or similar apps? Could you say more about this approach?
@@naclaski99 I don't add every word in Anki just the most 5 interested that I encountered during the day
I can't imagine studying 8 hours a day. I'm exhausted after 1 hour.
My limit is 2 hours. The other hours I'd use for immersion, but I prefer learning another thing and exercise the body.
same :( learning japanese, i really do like it but i get like 2hrs in and i need english to reset the brain 😂
Haha “Vocabulary is power” Sir, you are absolutely right.
When I felt bored studying vocabulary, my English teacher told me “Hey, living abroad is like living on a battlefield, and vocabularies are bullets. How could you survive without bullets?”
Thanks man for your work! You really make me inspired. Sometimes when I'm frustrated and hopeless because of my failures I just watch your videos and understand it's just part of learning process which I need to accept.
The learning vs acquisition divide is similar to how we taught AIs to use language. At first we tried to teach computers explicit grammar rules and lists of vocabulary. But language is too complicated and contextual and that approach didn’t work very well.
Now we have far more complex neural networks that cannot be directly programmed - they must learn language iteratively by repeated exposure to vast quantities of training material from the real world: Input. During the training they encounter a word like “love” used in millions of different contexts, and somewhere in the network a cluster of neurons begins to ‘acquire’ the concept of “love”, linking it to related words and concepts. Each training pass shapes the model ever so subtlely, until something like understanding emerges.
Every time I do some focused listening in my target language, I imagine something similar happening in my brain.
That’s really interesting!
I think this is the main difference between a machine translator and LLMs.
This is how I was taught Spanish with people around me vs when I was shoved with grammar taking French. Despite not speaking Spanish for 5 years my sentences followed much better than I did in france
Agreed 💯 I have discovered this as well. And I really enjoy starting with a rather complex text and watching my brain adapt and learn through repeated exposure to the same material. It's mesmerizing.
Sometimes, I notice a word in Arabic that I never noticed before but I don't have enough context to guess the meaning.
Later, I encounter that same word in different contexts and I remember where I heard it first. If I've heard the word in three different contexts, I can start triangulating the meaning. I know it is within the confines of that triangle.
Oh my gosh, I'm an English language teacher who grew up in an environment where people said, "Would have went." and "Should have went." I love that you used that example. My partner is also a language teacher and despite frequent corrections and my knowledge of grammar and modals, I STILL slip into this regional grammar usage.
I deeply appreciate your contribution to these conversations, Steve. I'm both a language learner and a music teacher, and your thoughts have benefitted both of those pursuits for me. Thank you!
I think some deliberate vocabulary practice is really helpful for complete beginners. Learning common nouns and verbs with some flash cards can be really helpful to get started with basic reading.
I feel frustrated and hopeless sometimes but watching you gives me hope. thank you
Rule #1: Don't quit.
you learned english and it was much more difficult than you remember
Is very difficult learn a new language however we should to study every day for improve our skills in this language is very important the dedication and our motivation
@@xdarie0 IT is very difficult to learn a new language; however, we should -to- study everyday -for- TO improve our skills in this language. Motivation and dedication is very important
@@xdarie0 I fixed it for you. The last part you wrote was a run on sentence/ unintelligible
These videos always encourage and inspire me, thanks Steve!
I recently increased the intensity of my Japanese study, I have a 2-3 hour-long conversations a day in Japanese. And outside of that, I'm reading and watching things in Japanese. It's a lot of fun but burnout feels like it's on the horizon. After watching these videos about language learning, it always reinvigorates me and pushes that horizon further away.
But Chomsky has never said we don't need to learn. The idea of instinct and innate ability we all have seems quite solid. Of course, we need to learn and expose ourselves. I think you're approaching different concepts.
I don't know who needs to hear this today but Duolingo teaches scripts in Arabic Chinese and Hebrew. This is essential.
This is probably the thing about Duolingo everyone can agree on.
Korean, Russian, Japanese too
@@хейтер-д4з This is good!
For me the simplest way to get any kind of word base in a language is to play on the Drops application.
I knew it was a child that someday I'd be a world traveler but I had no idea that learning Russian scripts Russian words would be so easy.
After that step Clozemaster gets your next through the door.
Right here I would include links to Drops and Clozemaster but TH-cam
SHADOW BLOCKS LINKS
DOESNT ALLOW STICKER OR GIF
TH-cam NEEDS TO GET WITH THE TIMES AND ALLOW US TO POST SCREENSHOTS!!
I do not know how about the other languages, but when it comes to arabic learning with doulingo- a lot of things there are not correct, especially when it comes to pronunciation. So don’t start with doulingo, you will learn the non correct things (I guess referring to Chinese and other languages the same problem ) - I would prefer other tools - especially for beginners
I'd not recommend it for Chinese script.
I’m no Chomskian but universal grammar is grossly mischaracterized here
I'm a newbie here and don't know much about Chomsky's work. What is your understanding of his theory and how would you describe its mischaracterization here?
Language Jones does a great clarification (th-cam.com/video/s0WoNNdfjUA/w-d-xo.html). But tldw: the theory is that humans have a set baseline "kit" of possible natural language grammar rules in which we have built natural language. As varied and complicated as we can imagine theoretical grammar rules, in real life humans tend towards a limited set of possibilities.
@@joshuameadows3166 I second the pointer to Language Jones. In short Chomsky’s idea is that there are a limited number of innate parameters for grammar that can be mixed and matched to get the variety of languages.
Oh, and the mischaracterization here is that it is suggested UG is incompatible with grammatical variety. There are genuine problems with UG, but the kind of surface level variety language learners encounter isn’t one of them, or at least just saying “look variety, therefore no UG” is oversimplified to the point of being misleading.
Note that Krashen, whom Steve idolizes, is a Chomskian!
I memorize some vocabulary and it works for me. Thanks.
I didn't used to read in my native language so I can't find something that I enjoy it's so frustrated
You are inspiring people. This is very precious. Thsnk you.
I've always been a good speller, but I always had to write it down first. I would then look at it and know if it was right or wrong. I'm sure many people have similar experiences, whether it be music or dress sense. Once you've had enough meaningful interaction with something, you just know when something is off.
1. "Frequency of Exposure".
2. "Brain pattern to predict"
3. Repetition
Steve tou are the reason I have loved language learning and I am learning French now
I'm speak spanish for if someone wanna learn and I wanna learn English , Say for practice , sorry for my mistake
Great video. Now back to immersing.
This is a very interesting and informative video. It does raise some questions. For example, Steven Kaufmann is the language equivalent of a star NHL player. Would a beginner skater wish to copy the methods used by a star NHL player?
Trying to play like a pro right away isn't smart. Following a pro's advice for beginners might be. Especially when the pro is furnishing science that seems to apply generally to all humans, not just pros.
@@mellamanborrego8299 There are many that claim that Chomsky’s ideas are science. I do happen to believe, based on reading about the subject, that Stephen Krashen is on the right track, though I’m not sure how convincing the evidence is.
Very comprehensive presentation!
I received it in the context of a person who is functionally fluent in a second.language that was haphazardly acquired, and acquired through a personal relationship.
Your discussion resonated with my experience and clarified my plans to learn German and Arabic, and improve my Italian.
I would add that in my relatively strong second language (French), writing has been an important means of actually situating myself in the language. My greatest obstacle in French is speaking English with French words.
Writing about various topics in French is an opportunity to enter into the idiomatic nuance of the language.
I’ve ben following Steve videos and advice for quite some time and I have great admiration for him. But I must say that the presentation of Chomsky here was a rather gross misrepresentation. His theories can obviously be discussed (as they are) as well as defended (as they are), but on a theoretical level, without simplification or caricature. And to qualify his views as simply “ideology” is just, I’m sorry, preposterous.
Universal Grammar means that LLMs simply cannot process language. They do not have the built-in structures that children have.
Another great video. The person who supports your videos with the graphics does a good job. Ngā mihi ki a koe! All the best from New Zealand.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Steve!
Love from Pakistan🇵🇰! Sir, I highly admire your patience and consistency with the languages. Can't wait to see you start hindi. Learning hindi will give you extra advantage to understand my native language urdu, since both languages are mutually intelligible and both pakistanis and Indians can communicate with each other without any difficulty.
you should learn Chinese because China Pakistan Zindabad
How to start to read in new language? In case I know only 10 words. There is no content for me. 😢
My problem is that listening to input does not teach me the details. I learn to understand that ‘Ich fahre’ means I drive, but when I want to use it, I can’t remember if it’s Ich fahre or Ich fährt or whatever. Flash cards help teach me the details.
Strange, but I think it depends on your native language partially at least. I never had problems with German verb conjugation but the only novel thing for me (and a hard one too) was the distinction between ihr (you to a group of “du”s) and Sie (“you” used with a stranger OR a group of strangers). So, habt ihr vs haben Sie was really a pain in my language learning ass
Nice video, but the comment on universal grammar was completely unnecessary and out of context. All theories are ideologies in some sense, they have their basic assumptions. The point made doesn’t disprove Chomsky’s idea of UG…
For a fuller discussion see this article. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar. I used the Chomsky false theory as a lead into how language rules are in fact learned, since they are not innate. "people learn about probabilistic patterns of word distributions in their language, rather than hard and fast rules (see Distributional hypothesis). For example, children overgeneralize the past tense marker "ed" and conjugate irregular verbs as if they were regular, producing forms like goed and eated and correct these deviancies over time.[33] It has also been proposed that the poverty of the stimulus problem can be largely avoided, if it is assumed that children employ similarity-based generalization strategies in language learning, generalizing about the usage of new words from similar words that they already know how to use.[34]
I didn't disprove Chomsky. I just pointed out that it is not a valid theory of how we learn languages. Chomsky has not proven anything. There is nothing to disprove.
Steve, I think you have misunderstood Chomsky's universal grammar. It's not that every child automatically knows what's correct or not (which is obviously false), but rather that every child has an innate set of grammatical possibilities from which to choose those that are most likely to fit the language he is learning. This means that he has a very restricted set of options from which to build his own internal grammar.
Something I discovered is that everybody reinvents the language he is learning, whether it's his first or not. He creates a version of the language which is unique to himself, although extremely similar to those of other speakers of the same language. I accept as evidence of this reinvention the rebracketing of some words, e.g., "a napron" to "an apron" or "a nadder" to "an adder".
If each child creates Grammer that is completely unique, as you stated, similar but different, then it means that there are no predetermined grammatical rules. If such rules were in place then the grammatical understandings would be identical or nearly impossible to differentiate.
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صحيح معك حق
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This is great advice, I'm currently working on Arabic. I'm learning classical so I can speak to anyone then I will work on local dialect depending on where I'm at in the world. So if learning has a lot to do with exposure would it be beneficial to learn words and phrases and listen to podcasts in Arabic to increase my exposure?
Arabic has a very regular writing system when diacritics is used, however without diacritics is highly ambiguous because those diacritic marks are for all short vowels, which are only three but of high grammatical value.
any learner should read text and learn words with diacritic marks first then the context will solve any issues later when the core vocabulary and grammar are acquired.
Мое почтение, уважаемый Стив! Дай Вам Бог здоровья!
How do you immerse yourself in the language to begin with though? If you only know a few phrases and words how can you watch TV etc in that language and get anything from it? I'm learning arabic as well BTW
2:03 You don't call it ultrasound. I bet Chomsky knows that.
I listen Audiobooks while reading at the same time. I sense like
being driving in a highway.
The nickname for that is "scuba diving", because it's a sort of "unnatural" hack that allows you to be fully immersed in something that you'd normally find too difficult, the same as a scuba tank helps you to be immersed even if you can't hold your breath for more than a minute.
Knowing words helps to improve pronounce them simply by detecting while hearing them.
I wasn't an emigrant but I learned English and my native language together because of the English courses, games and films. To this day, I remember the English alphabet better than in my language😅. And yes, I received many compliments about my reading skills.
The second myth is not actually a myth. It is absolutely true that the huge amount of language data children acquire drives most of language acquisition, but correction is actually very common.
The idea that correction is uncommon has been taken basically for granted in linguistics for decades (ironically mostly to support Chomsky's arguments about universal grammar), but more recent research that actually collected large corpora of child-directed speech discovered that correction is actually pervasive. It's so common and normalized that people don't even realize how often they do it.
That said, Chomsky's universal grammar theory is not so stupid that he didn't realize that certain things are correct in some languages and not others.
How do you explain that children of immigrants, if they are young enough, just naturally learn from their peers,. You think all of their errors can be corrected by teachers?
@@Thelinguist Definitely not.
The point isn't that correction is necessary. It clearly isn't. And Chomsky's argument about "poverty of the stimulus" has always been very silly. It's easy to explain how data leads children to expectations that are subverted by further data - no correction necessary to obtain negative evidence.
BUT it is just a fact that correction is also pretty common. Actual data collection shows it is substantially more common than Chomsky et al insisted.
lol I’ll go ahead and tell you that my parents are Turks and I grew up in Russia since the age 1 and ironically me and my siblings were the ones to correct our parents and get pissed when they mispronounced words when reading us fairytales in Russian.
Now looking back I think of that moment when teachers would praise me for writing waaay more correct than other (Russian) kids, although my 2 other siblings were more like other kids in the class. And then I used to read our Russian literature textbook at home about poets and their brief bio (2 pages) and then to my and my Russian teacher’s surprise I started reciting them by heart word for word(!). She’d knock on the door whenever I had another class and take me to parallel classes, put me in front of a whole class and have me recite any bio kids would select from the book and I’d recite it.
Funny thing is, that was the case when I learned effortlessly but after I was pleased by all these applause, I wanted to do the same with other textbooks, like history for example, since I loved this subject too. And it didn’t work! What worked many time on its own did NOT work when I was trying to learn the texts deliberately. But I digressed.
So, yes, I am someone who wasn’t exposed to the language at home and still managed to learn it better than my “native” peers. So, there was no way my mom or dad would correct us 😅
INTERESTING about difficulty reading non-Arabic words written in Arabic. I find the same thing with Greek. A word like cellotape( on Hary Potter's glasses). written in Greek letters totally stumped me, whereas I can read real Greek words with ease, even if I don't know what they mean.
In Lacanian theory, the place in the mind where language is constantly maintained is the "unconscious". Some readers of Lacan say that the unconscious is a stage on which language snippets are constantly played (re-enacted) and conflicts in the chains of signification are resolved - much like a rebus machine. That would explain our inclination for prediction and our ability to spontaneously react (in language) to social situations.
You're the best Steve! Thank you so much for all of your videos and advice. You've helped me so much on my language learning journey.
Even when I do have the words I sometimes can't understand. Often.. actually
Studying words in isolation does work, though. This is widely known and accepted among experienced language learners. You learn incomparably faster when you combine deliberate learning with naturalistic methods.
Does work? Yes. More effective? Here I have to disagree though.
@@KnightOfEternity13 People who use purely naturalistic methods consistently get worse results than people who mix it with deliberate learning strategies. Even Kaufmann himself used a more balanced approach when he learned his core languages that he is fluent in.
I think less frequent words which you encounter once or don't encounter in months or even years are better to be learned by deliberate memorization.
Of course it wasn't just me but as I feel that comment as a precise response to my comment in the other video I'd add that you are thinking of ANKI in the wrong way. I don't even try to remember anything when doing ANKI. Mostly following you own advice by the way. In a language maybe like Arabic, and certainly in languages like Thai, Vietnamese and even Japanese and Korean, if you are not living there, there are just TOO many words and, as you've pointed out, VERY LITTLE time in a day to be exposed to all the words you need, all the time you need, with the frequency you need. ANKI is a way to speed up the process. I use ANKI to recognize words while doing immersion. The problem is in doing immersion in such languages you'll for a LONG TIME not recognize over 90% of the words used (specially with just one to two hours a day) so, therefore, you can't read or watch jack s&& in the language and searching for ALL the words you don't know it's just too boring, gruesome and will take you HOURS to read one or 2 paragraphs. It's just too slow. ANKI will make you able to recognize more words during immersion as the weeks, months and YEARS pass by. And, combined with immersion, will give you the repetition you need so it goes to your long term memory to AT LEAST recognize it, to go to your PASSIVE vocabulary, for when you read and watch things in the language. And I suspect the SAME will be true in HINDI. So I'll follow your progress in Hindi without doing it.
Well, that's just wrong.
First of all, with modern tools it's not so hard to look for every word when reading. I can't see how it's more boring than doing flashcards. You can also always start with texts, intended for beginners which don't have so many new words.
And finally, I'll teach you a secret: you don't actually need to search ALL the words in a vocabulary to read and learn from the context.
It looks as if you somehow just afraid to begin reading, and feel that you need to become "well-prepared" to do that, while it's totally possible to do that from the very start and don't bother with such things, and win from it. You will soon notice that the basic words are so frequent, so they are fast to learn anyway, with Anki or not.
@@KnightOfEternity13 I think searching for each and every word is MORE boring than doing flashcards. and I want t watch and rad things made by natives for natives, not boring stuff made for learners. I also think ANKI is WAYYY less boring than than reading bullshit made for learners. And probably you missed the context of my comment and the last video. He was talking about how much vocabulary you need in Arabic to watch and read stuff. That with the same amount of vocabulary he can enjoy way more things in Persian. So it's the same as learning Japanese (he learned but he lived in Japan for 10 years, it's different, so much so he gave up on KOREAN) Vietnamese, Thai and other languages from Southeast Asia. I'm Brazilian. I didn't use ANKI to learn English, nor Italian, but learning JAPANESE to the point you can ACTUALLY b fluent in Japanese without ANKI even studying 3-8 hours a day (let alone just 1 hour)? That will take you than years at minimum! same, and even more, I'd say, for Vietnamese, in which I'm in my fourth year. Ad Mandarin that I just started. I'm talking about sitting and watching the evening news in Vietnamese in the VTV4 channel comfortably. Just too many words, just too many sounds (not even counting the 6 tones) to be able just to HEAR the different sounds in Vietnamese without ANKI helping you. So much so he only did Chinese because he studied FULL TIME (and also did flashcards back then, he says) and for Japanese he LIVED in Japan. The only difficult language so far he did AT HOME is Russian really. Maybe Russian isn't so hard as those other ones.
From his experience with Korean and Arabic, it reinforced my belief that you almost NEED ANKI for such languages. Otherwise it will take you more than a decade and read and watch something MEAINGFUL, made by adults for adults.
@@KnightOfEternity13 Remember that he FIALED at Koran too. and he was already fluent in Japanese, which I'm now, and would give him a headstart in Korean. Japanese and Mandarin he had favorable circumstances. This of just listening and reading just one hour a day with a reputable difficult language for Westerners he ONLY did with RUSSIAN (the other Slavic languages is because he already was pretty good at Russian). And I'm predicting (I may be wrong) he will have the same problem in HINDI, despite its relations with Caucasian languages. In this part of the world" where I'm learning languages it's a while different beast my friend. As I said I neve used ANKi for English or Italian, and would never use it. But going to East Asia and southeast Asia? Even HIM, Kaufnan, so successful otherwise, is feeling the difference.
@@KnightOfEternity13 PS: Luca Lampariello who also is against ANKI and have a very interesting method for learning also admits he failed with Japanese. Going from the West to tis part of the world if way harder than an American learning French, or even Russian. Saying "just start reading" for Japanese. Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Mandarin, Cantonese and the likes, with all due respect is just BS. You don't even know what a tall order t is when you can't even read the script or listen to the different sounds in the language. You start with FOUR complete different sounds in the language (again, not even counting tones here) sounding the SAME to you.
@@JohnnyLynnLee Well, I've learned Japanese exactly just by doing reading from the start, and have never felt I lost anything of value. Your excuses? Maybe, you should just stop learning so many languages at once. Or Anki would not help you anyway.
But honestly, just do what you want. If you find mindlessly going again and again through cards more interesting than reading a beginner content, your brain probably works differently and my advices can't help you.
Just found your channel Steve, very interesting. I am learning Spanish for work and I am moving from the uSA to the Dominican this year. When I was at university studying music we use NASA accelerated learning techniques (used when a complex series of events or procedures are needed ) where you practice for 1 minute, break 30 seconds practice the next phrase for 1 minute break 30 secs etc. then after 45 mins complete break for 15 minutes. Doing that for every scale, song, riff , technique in all the different styles keeps the brain in positive learning mode. (the first and last minute of your practice, in between that does nothing) That deals with the brain needing repetition but also novelty.. Repeated every day you suddenly found you had learned.
Hello Stive it's sensational your video and i gonna learning more languages.
Corrected:
Hello Steve, your video is sensational and I am going to learn more languages.
I drink my coffee with cream and a hotdog. 😅
Not even
DO BOTH!
DROPS APPLICATION=WORD BASE
CLOZEMASTER=SPACED REPETITION
OLLY RICHARDS SHORT STORIES
“It is far more difficult for me to read a word written in the Arabic alphabet which is not a word…it might be a foreign word….”
I can definitely relate to this with Japanese. Reading words in Katakana is sometimes a pain and I find it kind of a drag…it’s not because I don’t know Japanese, but it just clearly feels like borrowed words don’t belong to the language….because they don’t…they feel, no pun intended, foreign…. (Of course, Katakana is used for more than just borrowed words like onomatopoeias and emphasis)
As far as low vs high frequency vocab, also feel high frequency is just as important as low frequency vocab…the way I see it is: if I find it in my reading or listening, chances are I’ll see it again.
Exposure is always more important than rot memorization…but when you’re a beginner in a language that is extremely different to your own, anki just becomes a necessity to do it at least for very few words daily….but a learner has to be conscious enough to know when anki isn’t effective anymore…as nobody can learn an entire language, at some point anki needs to be dropped.
After you’re advanced enough, you will pick up new words from context and sometimes you can even infer the meaning based on the context and won’t even need to look it up.
At least the katakana kind of clues you in that it's a loan word.
@@paulwalther5237 True, but that’s only the case with Katakana… I also read and watch a lot of stuff with Sino Japanese in it since I also like the chinese culture……in there they have nouns made up of just kanji which when you read it it just feels weird, and sometimes some nouns just appear in the dictionary as the way you refer to something in the chinese culture..so it’s very specific…but my point is that it’s not just Katakana used to describe things of different cultures.
a lot of times such content does have furigana…but not always…also sometimes you see kanji used for names of people but in “furigana” they have an entirely different pronunciation in katakana that would not be how you would read that character at all…at least it’s not common onyomi for that character, but instead it’s the actual chinese pronunciation of that character or group of characters (I know as I watch donghua/CDramas with Chinese audio and Japanese subs so when they say the name it matches what the reading is in the subs for that kanji)
I do think katakana is a blessing because while I was a beginner it made it easier to remember a lot of words that sounded similar to english…I didn’t really have to use anki for such words. But now I honestly just wish Japanese had less borrowed words (like, say, Chinese…..where they have a word for everything. It’s more to memorize, but in the end all words feel like they belong to the language)
the same story with Thai language 😅
I am just starting to learn Japanese and knowing when I have enough to try and expose myself to Japanese media without being overwhelmed is a balancing act.
I opened up monster hunter portable 3rd for example and found tons of Kanji I dont recognize, overall, fairly overwhelming! I guess I should start with basic graded reader stories, or an anki vocab deck first.
@@ridleyroid9060 Japanese was painfully slow for me but my addiction to anime saw me through 😂. I think both the graded reader and Anki are good ideas. I hear good things about Satori reader. I got started by taking classes.
Words = concepts … interesting
Dear Mr. Kaufman. I think I read a mistake in French subtitles at 12:32. I think the translation of "eventually" is not "éventuellement", but "finalement". But I may be wrong myself.
You are not wrong, Rudolph
.....
This is an amazing channel!! And you're work is very encouraging!!
6:31
The dominant hemisphere processes language, it is the left hemisphere in 97% of cases. Visuospatial skills such as mental rotation or perception of faces seem more linked to the right hemisphere, while processes involved in numbering involve the left hemisphere more than the right.
What's that got to do with price of Kangaroos in Madagascar??
@@Dan.50 everything
What views want is to create a program to learn language using pareto method. 80/20. Ready for apply. Explication of what or why doesn't help views. It not useful. How or not how. Only waste time to listen.
My god…he can barely PRONOUNCE “vocabulary”. Rather than grammar, maybe we should study what exactly happens to people when they reach 70 years? What is this slurring that occurs? Post debate thoughts, I suppose?
I learned english when i was 5 back in 2013, as a native Romanian and at first sounded as Romanian for me until i found out i could understand well!
Why not Bengali language?
I’m currently learning Brazilian Portuguese. 🇧🇷
Aí sim companheiro
That's good decision
Bons estudos e boa sorte!
Portugal Portuguese is better and official
@@candidfellow my brother in Christ, just no... And the only official thing is the writing, which is shared, not the speech.
Large language models (LL!s) are the new type of AI that has become a huge buzz word. That is the type of AI that predicts the next word. Other types of AIs don’t, even though there are many that use deep learning, which was inspired by the way that neural connections work in the brain. I do wonder whether the language processing part of our brain works like an LLM or not?
I'm russian. Can you teach me to understand and speak English? I want to work more and meet and make friends with different people. I feel limited myself without a fluent understanding English. USA 🇺🇲
Hello sir. I'm learning French and I want to improve my English, but I always think that I don't utilize the correct method to learn. Sometimes I stress with a lot a vocabulary and grammatical rules.
My basic problem is that I am learning german language. I have cleared A2 level as well as one module of B1 level (writing) but the problem is that can't even remember the A1 vocabulary may be because of being lazy and not working enough on each word.
You still haven't debunked universal grammar. Pattern recognition certainly doesn't negate it.
You can't really debunk something like that.
But imo universal grammar is only a workable theory if you largely ignore non European languages
You can't debunk universal grammar. UG doesn't make any predictions which can be tested.
Does it really matter just do everything from passive to focused learning/immersion. You'll get more and more understanding. Open your mouth and you'll get better at fluency. Believe you can learn. There is at least one comment on every video about these silly argumentative discussions.
Almighty God give you more grace to live long in the Name of the LORD and Savior Jesus Christ of Nazareth. From Kenya. Shalom
Love from India Hindi is my native language.
Learning english wanna learn Spanish 😅
Any English speaker who wants to talk to me .
Reply me .
From my personal experience and those I know, his claim that immigrants read better than natives is falce. I came to USA at age of six. While I don't struggle, I hesitate on certain sounds and tones
In my opinion, learning a new language takes time and requires both active and passive learning. Active recall is also a great way to remember the things we have learned better. Spaced repetition is also essential to learning. Combining all these learning strategies is a great way to help one become fluent in a language.
Ohh sir you are really crazy man 20 language even those all are very unfamiliar to you . Unbelievable sir .
Man, what is your education? You've learned several languages, and you think that you are also a kind of a scientist and propose your theories about language learning? It is pretty presumptuous.
I just learned, embarrassingly, the correct word for watermelon in Spanish is sandia, after I mistakenly said aguacate 😂
I have written your company asking for an explanation of how the system works, and I have not received a reply. That's why I have not used the free trial. I would be willing to pay but the interface is quite confusing. Perhaps I wrote the wrong person, could you direct me to the correct one? Thank you.
There’s a lot of TH-cam videos explaining how to use it as well
It's like a library of audio with scipts. While you listen, you can press on words you don't know. The explanation pops up & that word is saved and marked in a different color. Later on you can put all the words you don't know to the flashcard. You can also see how many words in the text you don't know. You can import your audio and scripts yourself too. Just try it for a month.
Even native speakers of English get grammar wrong all the time and need correction. Ask any high school or college writing professor.
this video changed me in a positive way :)
This is very useful. Thank you for your valuable observations. This will help.
Any form of prediction, including a quiz activates it and triggers learning when failed to recall it. But reading or speaking costs each a lot of time to look up the word. And if I don't look it up it just gets nowhere.
Thanks for your great video Steve. Kiitos.
Is it possible, to find Monsieur Botilieaú??
immigrant kids have to translate for their parents, bills, school docs, etc.
I would say instead: they regularize the past tense of irregular verbs @4:26
Are you sure that your information is accurate and based on lingustics approaches
Ada yg bs terjemahin ke bahasa indonesia gk sih intinya apa..😂
I think what you said about consuming a great variety of content to make learning languages effective and enjoyable is correct. But I think that is only true once you have reached a certain level, e.g. B1. When I only have A1 or A2 level in a language, I find vocabulary drills a necessary and efficient duty to learn the basic vocabulary. I find example sentences related to the vocabularies also very useful. Furthermore, pronunciation audio and possibly images for each vocabulary are useful in my opinion.
I’ve been studying Portuguese for 9.5 years now and I’ve visited Brasil 18 times but I can’t read or converse yet and I have to translate everything into English to understand. Even basic words that I’ve known for years don’t mean anything to me until I translate them one at a time. It prevents me from understanding and conversing. I practice every day with my girlfriend who only speaks Portuguese and we’ve been practicing for 6.5 years now but I can only make out an occasional word which I then have to translate. I need to find a way to learn and understand Portuguese without translating everything. Tests show that I know over 20,000 words but they all need to be translated.
Stop translating and start understanding the concepts in the language
@@Personaje123 when I don’t translate I can’t understand anything. How would I understand without translating? Thanks
@@patfromamboyYou need to train it, like watching Brazilian videos without making the effort to understanding, only to recognize the words. For example, you hear "gato" and, instead of thinking "gato = cat", just think "gato"(maybe also 🐈, but not the English word).
@@lucassantossj I’ve already been watching videos. Some with subtitles and some just watching. For years but I still can’t understand what people are saying. I study and practice every day and have for 9.5 years now but I can’t understand what people are saying. I’ve visited Brasil 18 times. Thanks for the help!
I have serious trouble comprehending your very low level of mastery considering the many years of learning, practising on a daily basis with a native (your girlfriend) travelling to Brezil twice every year during the last 9 years. True, you must Stop translating every single word and understand the context of what is being said. It is not important to understand every single word! And then repeat simple conversations so that they enter your brain !!! Only this way you will progress!!!! I am surprised you have not lost your courage in the meantime!!!
I am 75 years old, German, speak and teach English, speak fluent French, and intermediate Italian and Spanish, but the latter two took me less than half the time you took...... you need to think of a better learning system/approach!!!! GOOD LUCK!!!
what would be an ideal 1 hour / 2 hour routine , i am considering changing my routine as i think it is not as effective ( i am learning fusha )
Per this video maybe all but a few minutes on reading/listening/speaking.
In 1 hour: 15 minutes studying new content, then revision of older content, then a more relaxing activity.
This guy talks too much. A brief video is much more effective
Love ❤from morocco
Is it okay if I make a list of vocabularies, and then practice those words when practicing grammar? Or practice doing any kind of grammar drills?
Do what you like doing. I don't make lists. I don't worry about what I can use. i want to understand more and more and eventually speaking will come.
I have a cousin that learned English from her mom, HInidi from her dad and Spanish from her nanny all before she was 8 years old. I guarantee she wasn't taught any grammer along the way.