I literally felt betrayed when I took my first French class in high school and learned that the correct phrase is actually "omlette au fromage". How could Dexter's Lab lie to me?????????
Totally anecdotal (and dumb), but: I am learning Swahili. One night, i had a dream in which I was doing a Swahili lesson. The next morning, I definitely felt like I had genuinely learned -- not new words, but I could retrieve words that I already knew, faster.
@@philipp1922 Yes, but languagejones should also link the sources cited. It's easier to just look them up if I want to and it makes it more transparent. I trust him that he won't spread misinformation willingly, but it should not be the standard.
What a strange thing to say - you do know academics read the published studies of other academics - and consider them, weigh the evidence and the argument and then comment in their own work. Any academic who can’t or won’t cite the sources they are discussing is doing themselves and other interested parties a disservice.
@@NekonataVirino you realise I'm asking for the studies because I'm *actually interested in the studies*, right?? I'm asking because the findings are genuinely interesting, and I know a lot of people in my cohort and in service teachers who might also be interested.....
There was a period of my teenage years where I slept with the radio on. And it really didn’t seem to impact my sleep at all unless a song came on that I really liked and I was dreaming. Then the dream would become all about the song, usually with a rock band manifesting and giving an impromptu concert. After which, the dream would carry on as if that didn’t happen.
I did the same thing with stand up comedy. I still remember having a dream where I was running around trying to get a good look at Godzilla, and I ran into a house and out a sliding glass door into the backyard, and comedian Patton Oswalt was in the house doing a bit that involved someone walking out of a sliding glass door, I woke up, that bit was playing, and I hadn’t actually even gotten to the part where the guy leaves the house yet
May be super obvious, but having a busy, physically taxing day is almost a sure-fire way to be sleepy. Like walk a bunch, learn a bunch, work out, work, etc. And no screens an hour before bed
I miss your language learning streams! I'm trying to actually get serious about learning Czech, and even if it's not the same language, it's a nice motivator to sit down and study. Love your videos!
My going-to-sleep routine: reading a novel in French (I am learning French). Because I noticed that somehow a lot of vague grammerness started "feeling right" when I did that. And vocabulary sticks more. Just my anecdote but this video gives me an explanation why it makes sense - thanks!
My sleep hygiene: eat melatonin, still have insomnia, try again, if it didn't work, drink coffee and pass out at the end of the day, wake up at 1am, repeat
Melatonin doesn't help for a lot of people and can even worsen sleep for some people. Ditch the melatonin and take Valerian root + Magnesium glycinate + L-theanine 1 hr before bed, significantly dim the lights and screens 1hr before bed, and and don't look at any screens 30 min before bed. go to bed at the same time every night even if it takes a long time to fall asleep, just lay there until you fall asleep. make sure your room is 100% dark when you go to sleep, no nightlights, no little sources of light no matter how dim or small. make sure your room is a little cold but not so cold that it makes you shift around a lot and prevents you from falling asleep. experiment with a quiet source of white noise like a fan. do even a little bit of exercise during the day, if you're physically tired it's way easier to fall asleep. do all those and i guarantee you your sleep problems will melt away within a couple weeks. do even a couple of them and i promise your sleep will get way better. even just taking the supplements are likely to help a lot. thank me later
i really recommend taking it seriously, getting better sleep can literally help with almost everything you do. also, if you implement the steps i suggested, going off coffee can help and as you get more sleep and better sleep you'll need it less and less anyway. personally i avoid drinking more than half a cup of coffee except on days i really need to focus knowing that im sacrificing some future productivity for a few hours of increased productivity.
Woah this help explain my own linguistic imbalances. During my PhD I used to read Old English/Norse/Saxon poetry before sleep (in second year, this was Latin). And these - especially Old English - are now much stronger than many other languages I've studied which I now realize I've used mostly in the daytime.
Likewise actually, in final year (I'd finished all the poetry) I ended up listening to tv shows wiht audio description while I fell asleep. This was mostly Swedish so I used to listen to that most night before I dozed off, and my Swedish now is much stronger than any of my modern languages (besides English obviously).
love your work, thanks for all the great content! I have a video request for you: an explanation of grammar concepts for all languages, not specific to one language (i.e. as a tool to help people understand what a grammatical construct means in any language)
Two tips for sleep that have helped me a LOT. First, no bluish lights for a couple of hours (minimum) before bed. The blue band of the visible light spectrum tells your brain it's daytime, and can interfere with the production of melatonin (the sleep hormone). So use your settings on your phone and computer, etc., to shift the display into the red band or at least out of the blue. (I even turn off my lights for the last hour, with the exception of a lamp that I've covered in a red bandana.) Second, mentally review how your day went. What were the main things that you did, and that happened to you? Deal with any unresolved feelings about those events if necessary. Then write a list of things you plan to do the next day (works even better if you've already done this-- if you update the list throughout the day. I use my calendar app to schedule them). That way you can set today aside, and remind yourself that you don't need to think about tomorrow (because it's already on your list). This tip helps ensure you're not going to bed thinking about your day or about tomorrow's day. If this process brings up any dysregulation in your nervous system, use some regulating resources to come back into a calm, safe, peaceful state (if you know what I'm talking about). Bonus tip (because I forgot to make this list three items long): brush your teeth at least an hour before you go to bed. That way you're not standing under the bright bathroom lights right before going to sleep. I struggle with sleep because of my history of trauma, and because it just gets harder as people get older. These tips have made a huge difference for me. I hope they'll help someone else as well!
Whoa that second was is cool, can see how it might help. My best tips: have a wake up time and a bed time… and avoid (excessive) alcohol. I can’t attest to giving it up entirely but anything over 2 drinks royally screws my nights sleep.
This was interesting to watch. I’ve started working on my German lessons about an hour before bed instead of in the morning, and I’ve noticed a difference. For the last week or so I’ve gone to sleep listening to a German radio station. I usually listen to music to fall asleep anyway so I enjoy it and I think it might help.
Love your videos, this one comes down to it seems is how to simulate real life language learning as much as possible in a new learner situation. A baby and child that learn a new language i.e. their first language, spend their days surrounded with smells and visual cues, they hear their parents talking while they're asleep, and all of these assistive strategies that you're discussing it seems are just trying to simulate what it is to learn a language for the first time
In the first weeks of learning to recognize and read Devanagari, incident to studying Hindi, I enjoyed a few weeks worth of dreams which included instances of being pursued by unknown people who seemed to be waving swords, scythes, sickles, and saws above their heads. The dreams disappeared when the Devanagari letters became comfortably familiar.
I listen to Spanish phrases while I sleep. I always felt it was, at the very least, helpful. Interesting that you gave some data that supports what I was "feeling". Thank you, Sir!! 🥳
Back when I was learning Swedish, I listened to a lot of Swedish radio even before I knew any usable amount. One day I fell asleep while listening to Swedish radio and when I woke up, I understood a conversation in Swedish for the first time in my life. It was some radio play and I still remember that one man was trying to get another to jump in the water, while that other one was arguing that he can't swim. Before that I could only understand things like "homosexual" and "they're dancing naked", dirty mnemonics, as you say.
Being made to process Swedish before the mental barrier of "listening for what you know" could set in might be exactly what you needed. That barrier is also where the "I'm better at my target language after two drinks" meme comes in.
@@constantwin It also helps to avoid confusions that the orthography would cause. You get to learn words the way they are pronounced instead of the way they are written.
In studying the nature of learning (I teach weaving and spinning), I have stumbled upon most of these principles, or analogs of them, while watching my students. After some time around the table for the lecture portion, we go to the looms and do work there involving motion. We take a break from at-loom work, and have more lecture time (switch tasks), and when the students then go back to the loom, they are better for having had a break to process what they learned earlier; the break is as important as the lesson. Similarly, as the Japanese found out in a study of train safety protocols (I read this one some years ago in Smithsonian, but I’m sorry to say I have no citation), the researchers found out that if there were 3 sensory inputs (a physical motion, an auditory input, and an optical input), the subject would not make a mistake, because if one of the inputs was wrong, it introduced cognitive dissonance and shut down the approval process in the brain of the train conductor. Transferred to something more practical to my students, they had to watch, speak and hear a description, and move their arm as they performed a new process; they stopped making mistakes in that process. As a teacher, I find the nature of learning fascinating! Thanks for the video.
Thank you. I was deciding whether to go straight to bed or watch another of your videos. Now I've watched this one and am going to bed, hoping what I learnt about sleep-learning will stick 😊
Not exactly the same, but,… In 7th grade, when I taking my first foreign language class (German), the class was in the final period of the day. Consequently, the sounds of the German words and sentences, were echoing in my head during the ride home- at the end of every school day. I believe that this was very helpful in my absorbing of the language.
My sleep tip is to avoid super emotional things right before bed, especially things that make me angry! No politics/news. Anger or other high emotion makes it hard to sleep. :) Now I have to go hunt for some Japanese sleep stories.
The references to the testing of subjects as to what they could remembered got me thinking about whether those means of testing really are ideal and whether they are useful in predicting actual ability in say, having a conversation. My intuition tells me there's no direct correlation between being good at a word memorisation quiz and exhibiting fluency in organic situations. One reason why this makes sense is that these two environments demands different things of us in terms of e.g. how much time we have, how easily distracted we are, how we can use context as help and to what extent we have to be able to have two thoughts in our heads at the same time and keep them straight. And I know from experience that getting perfect grades in language class certainly doesn't directly translate into any semblance of ease when trying to actually speak said language.
I just started implementing a sleep time routine this week (drs. orders). So, low light 1hr before bed, no screens 1/2 hr before bed, deep breathing (inhale for 4, exhale for 6) for 10 min before sleeping. Your vid gave me an incentive to now turn on my Korean podcasts before bed and just let it plays as I fall asleep.
The guided relaxation podcasts in a target language or sleep stories are really nice. Even if I'm not learning Persian, I just like the Persian "stories for sleep" podcasts.
good job Jones. Yet another reason for me to get better sleep that I will tell myself I'll listen to and not end up following (because I procrastinate sleeping lol).
As far as the German speakers learning dutch while asleep, it would be interesting to know the actual words and if they were Platt speakers. The vocab is quite similar anyway.
Helpful sleep routine stuff: Have 2 routines - 1 for when you have time and energy to do a solid routine to decompress, clean up, prep for bed and the next day 2nd one for when you have no energy or time - bare minimum *having 2 routines (1 simple 5 minutes, 1 30+minutes) has made all the difference and I'm so glad I got in the habit before grad school. Now it still helps as a single mom/educator Cool idea for those wanting to add language learning to their sleep - pick an essential oil that you don't smell often or use a lot -sniff when you go to study and then use in a diffuser when you sleep paired with with YT vids esp made for sleep language learning or podcasts - even better if you know for certain the content you studied that day - does that work for an application? I want to test this out and see how it works!
Honestly, this has been my experience as well. In Latin America we eat late and I was able to warm back up to Spanish faster than my German where the sidewalks roll up after dark. 🤷🏻♀️
I often put a target language audio book or Tv series on as i go to sleep. I get lulled to sleep by the sounds and rhythms of the new language - i spend a few minutes picking out the actual content that i understand - then i get more sleepy and it’s just noise. Dunno if it helps learning BUT - i am not as ‘aware’ and ‘awake’ as something i might stay awake to listen to AND apparently my pronunciation and intonation in my target language is pretty good without me actually paying much attention to it.
I love the textbook under the pillow commentary! Anyone that has been through finals knows that doesn't work! I can't imagine Spanish is absorbed that way any better than calculus or physics! I'm just amazed that it needed to be pointed out.
Great video. I almost didn’t watch it assuming that you were going to say “Sleeping after studying helps you remember what you study” and end the video.
I didn’t absorb spanish while the podcast played during my sleep. I was just weary and u motivated to study more as a result. I do thirty min to one hour spanish study morning and again in late evening and do much better with a good sleep. That’s my style.
In one of your recent videos you made a side-comment about linguists not even really agreeing on what a word is. I keep thinking about that ever since you said it, and if it's not already on your topics-for-videos list, I'd certainly appreciate a deep-dive into whatever the controversy there is and what the competing ideas are in the linguistics word for the definition of a "word."
I've been studying Japanese, which is written without spaces. If you told me to put a space between each word, there are many cases where it would make just as much sense to me to add a space as to not. Words feel much less "real" to me now
I put my youngest daughter in a language acquisition/sleep study when she was a toddler. They got a bunch of toddlers, taught them new words (nonsense words, to avoid any previous exposure) naming pictures they saw on a computer. Then one group went home and took a nap while the other group stayed awake. The ones that took naps had much better recall of the new words when they went back a week later.
I realized that it might work when I noticed that the recordings I was listening to infiltrated my dreams. On the other day I remembered that the recording was playing inside my dreams. I also remember that I was already quite annoyed by the sound, at some point I tried to turn it off, I took out my headphones but the sound didn't stop playing because I was in a dream, but the sound was coming from outside. I believe if someone wants to try this, it's a good idea to start journaling about your dreams, it will help copying memories to long term storage.
I am retired. I have Long COVID which messes with my sleep, energy, cognitive thingy. Brain. Anyway, I never go to bed until I'm sleepy. I don't push, and stay up because I want to finish this chapter or whatever. Sleepy? Sleep? Wake up at stupid o'clock? Get up and do stuff. Obviously impractical for most people, but treating sleep like eating (eat when you're hungry, stop when you're not hungry [NOT when you're FULL]) is what works for my circs.
It’s interesting what impacts our dreams or not. Like in tv shows when an alarm in real life is incorporated as, say, a foghorn on a ship in a dream. Or when I listen to Bob Ross while sleeping, every now and then his brush stroke noises (a little chchchcch) will be in my dream as something shaking. So it’s no surprise that certain words, especially ones learned right before sleeping, will make their way back into a dream or two. I also once had a dream about my target language at one point and there was a person on the phone speaking my L2- which at the time I didn’t know. Then there was another person who was translating the phone conversation to me in my dream. Except I barely knew the basics in real life! When I woke up I looked up the words I remembered on Google translate and a bunch of them were correct! However I had done a lot of listening to interviews and songs before that night in my target language, and plus it has the same roots as my first language so now I know why my brain was going crazy! This video actually explains a lot!
I already tried this some time back and found a problem with it. I can fall asleep listening to English (my first language) fairly easily, but if I try to fall asleep listening to French (my target language) I can feel my brain switching on extra processing power trying to understand what I'm listening to and that keeps me from falling asleep.
I'm learning french, somewhere between A2 and B1 according to the AI, and i recently played a stop smoking sleep hypnosis en francais while i was dropping off. Guess what?! I had no desire to smoke the following day!! And no memory of hearing what the hypnotist actually had to say for himself 😮
I knew about the smell, I even tipped off my students. But combining it with sound: brilliant. And fairly obvious, with all the other things allready known. However, I never thought of it myself...
As an architecture student, I used to take a nap when I got stuck on a design and often would get the solution while sleeping. Later, I would routinely tell my son to review for his test one last time just before he went to bed for the night and it seemed to help. So this makes sense to me.
I love the part of learning a language when I start having dreams partially in the target language. It's so fun when I have to speak Japanese for one reason or another in a dream, and lately I've been hearing some chinese here and there. I'll try the scent technique for sure
Your question is really interesting! While there might be some curiosity about learning a language during sleep, I wonder if there are any studies on the effects of listening to sounds while sleeping. Personally, it doesn’t seem healthy to me, as sleep quality could be disrupted. Sleeping in a quiet environment seems more beneficial for proper rest and overall well-being.
It seems like that may well be the case. Although I find, personally, that if I'm too tired, it's not effective. So there's probably a sweet spot a few hours before bed.
Having it put so simply really shook me. If sleep gives such a direct and obvious benefit, the absence of good sleep represents directly squandered potential. I'm obviously aware that sleep is important, but for some reason the thought of all that missed potential, all the connections my brain doesn't have time to make because I'm sitting here typing a comment on TH-cam instead of going to sleep,.. ok goodnight
That's interesting. I honestly would have thought that phonology was also trainable while sleeping, given, as you say, that keyword and affect recognition are online. And I find myself wanting to repeat the study varying the morphological style of the language, because my engineering background makes me want to propose the hypothesis that basically you might be able do filters and finite state machines, but not stacks, while asleep.
I suspect when the sleeping mind is reminded of recently learnt words with verbal and non verbal cues that increases the time spent recalling the learnt material.
I've read that the area of the brain responsible for smell is close to the hippocampus, so stimulating the brain with smell may also stimulate memory encoding. It's suggested that having a scent nebuliser and putting a variety of scents through it can retard the onset of dementia. I'm probably getting all this wrong, but IIRC I read it in a newsletter from a neurologist called Dr. Joshua Turknett, who has a neuroscience-based music course for banjo called Brainjo. Worth looking at if you are interested in the science of learning even if you don't care about music instruction.
Excellent new info for me! I first heard of some of these related concepts in 1978 when I was 20 and learning German, my first new language to study. I saw a news story about a school that taught language learning with an added step of having the students lie down to rest with their eyes closed while listening to a story being played in their target language. The idea was that they would "absorb" some additional learning benefit by listening passively in a relaxed state. I do not recall any results of scientific studies done on this. I am wondering if any of that fits in what you have found out about this topic in your research of it. Is it possible there is an added benefit during the alpha state but not quite asleep state so that the Thalamic Gating is not happening?
Has anyone tried eating a book to absorb it's knowledge yet? I have Parosmia, which means I have no idea what I am smelling, unless someone tells me what it is. What however works incredibly well for me is music. So I combine most of my language learning with music. Either some calming instrumental in the background, one or two songs repeatedly, or I'll blast metal to keep myself from just paying for my french friends english or german courses. I've found that often when I am doing something completely unrelated, days or even weeks later and a song that I was listening to repeatedly while studying comes on, I'll suddenly remember bits and pieces of what I was learning doing that time. Same thing works with stories or sound effects. I think of steps crunching in the snow and some wind blowing, and I instantly remember the full lyrics and melody of a song I like, because that was the first thing happening in the music video.
So, is the same true for meditation? Since meditation is designed to quiet the mind and reduce the 'influx of noise', will it also help with the consolidation of learned information?
I was thinking about someone utilizing the memory palace technique while lucid dreaming. But, you covered that when you said that the encoding has to be done while awake.
My mom talks about how she took a music appreciation class in college and had trouble remembering the various songs, so she listened to the music while she was sleeping, and somehow she aced the test
When you cover a study like this, would you mind also talking about the size of the effect? How much better did the people who listened or smelled actually do?
Have you heard about these extreme cases where people go into comas and come out speaking their non-native language while forgetting their native language?
Sleep routine. I go to bed and get up at about the same time every work day (weekends are within 2 hrs), plus have a smart bulb w/a wakeup program that is set for 5 min before my alarm. I work 6a-230p.
Someone's been watching the omlette du fromage episode
*whisper* omlette... du... fromaaaaaaage
French is the language of loooove
I literally felt betrayed when I took my first French class in high school and learned that the correct phrase is actually "omlette au fromage". How could Dexter's Lab lie to me?????????
Thank Steve Martin for this popularized cheese omelette.
This comment is criminally underrated!
So my horrible habits of putting off studying until right before bed time is actually doing myself a favour! Let's gooo lol
Totally anecdotal (and dumb), but:
I am learning Swahili. One night, i had a dream in which I was doing a Swahili lesson. The next morning, I definitely felt like I had genuinely learned -- not new words, but I could retrieve words that I already knew, faster.
Applied linguist here working towards an MSc - pleeeease share the studies, even just authors and year!
Why you don't just trust some random stuff on the internet? What could possibly go wrong there?
@@philipp1922 Yes, but languagejones should also link the sources cited. It's easier to just look them up if I want to and it makes it more transparent. I trust him that he won't spread misinformation willingly, but it should not be the standard.
What a strange thing to say - you do know academics read the published studies of other academics - and consider them, weigh the evidence and the argument and then comment in their own work.
Any academic who can’t or won’t cite the sources they are discussing is doing themselves and other interested parties a disservice.
@@NekonataVirino I think you missed some obvious sarcasm there
@@NekonataVirino you realise I'm asking for the studies because I'm *actually interested in the studies*, right?? I'm asking because the findings are genuinely interesting, and I know a lot of people in my cohort and in service teachers who might also be interested.....
I know one thing: if I watch something in English (my l2) the night before, my English flows better the next day! Thanks for the video, will watch 🎉
I think sleeping with a text book over your face allows the knowledge from the book to seep into your head overnight.
Huge if true!
@@languagejones 🤣👍
I think this all came from a Garfield cartoon about "learning by osmosis"...
Tagalog while you tulog 👌🏼 the quality content we’re here for
No, but I've forgotten languages while I'm awake
LMAO
There was a period of my teenage years where I slept with the radio on. And it really didn’t seem to impact my sleep at all unless a song came on that I really liked and I was dreaming. Then the dream would become all about the song, usually with a rock band manifesting and giving an impromptu concert. After which, the dream would carry on as if that didn’t happen.
I did the same thing with stand up comedy. I still remember having a dream where I was running around trying to get a good look at Godzilla, and I ran into a house and out a sliding glass door into the backyard, and comedian Patton Oswalt was in the house doing a bit that involved someone walking out of a sliding glass door, I woke up, that bit was playing, and I hadn’t actually even gotten to the part where the guy leaves the house yet
May be super obvious, but having a busy, physically taxing day is almost a sure-fire way to be sleepy. Like walk a bunch, learn a bunch, work out, work, etc. And no screens an hour before bed
I miss your language learning streams! I'm trying to actually get serious about learning Czech, and even if it's not the same language, it's a nice motivator to sit down and study. Love your videos!
+1
im czech, hmu!!
@@happyfullfridge I would if I had any idea how tf to do that on TH-cam 😅
Also getting serious about learning Czech in preparation for starting work there. Any resources you recommend?
My going-to-sleep routine: reading a novel in French (I am learning French). Because I noticed that somehow a lot of vague grammerness started "feeling right" when I did that. And vocabulary sticks more. Just my anecdote but this video gives me an explanation why it makes sense - thanks!
I'm learning french too so I'll try that
You are really good at intros, man. Genuinely
"tagalog while you saw logs" got me good
My sleep hygiene: eat melatonin, still have insomnia, try again, if it didn't work, drink coffee and pass out at the end of the day, wake up at 1am, repeat
😂 relatable
Melatonin doesn't help for a lot of people and can even worsen sleep for some people. Ditch the melatonin and take Valerian root + Magnesium glycinate + L-theanine 1 hr before bed, significantly dim the lights and screens 1hr before bed, and and don't look at any screens 30 min before bed. go to bed at the same time every night even if it takes a long time to fall asleep, just lay there until you fall asleep. make sure your room is 100% dark when you go to sleep, no nightlights, no little sources of light no matter how dim or small. make sure your room is a little cold but not so cold that it makes you shift around a lot and prevents you from falling asleep. experiment with a quiet source of white noise like a fan. do even a little bit of exercise during the day, if you're physically tired it's way easier to fall asleep.
do all those and i guarantee you your sleep problems will melt away within a couple weeks. do even a couple of them and i promise your sleep will get way better. even just taking the supplements are likely to help a lot.
thank me later
i really recommend taking it seriously, getting better sleep can literally help with almost everything you do. also, if you implement the steps i suggested, going off coffee can help and as you get more sleep and better sleep you'll need it less and less anyway. personally i avoid drinking more than half a cup of coffee except on days i really need to focus knowing that im sacrificing some future productivity for a few hours of increased productivity.
How much do you take melatonin? For me, 1g is not enought. 10g is ok, then it works.
"Inception" was basically a documentary.
I didn’t even get a minute into the video and your aura and personality just made my week!!! “Norwegian while you nod” 😂
Woah this help explain my own linguistic imbalances. During my PhD I used to read Old English/Norse/Saxon poetry before sleep (in second year, this was Latin). And these - especially Old English - are now much stronger than many other languages I've studied which I now realize I've used mostly in the daytime.
Likewise actually, in final year (I'd finished all the poetry) I ended up listening to tv shows wiht audio description while I fell asleep. This was mostly Swedish so I used to listen to that most night before I dozed off, and my Swedish now is much stronger than any of my modern languages (besides English obviously).
How do you know that it’s definitely because of reading before sleep and hearing whilst sleeping?
@@AB-dz7lo I don't know for sure
love your work, thanks for all the great content! I have a video request for you: an explanation of grammar concepts for all languages, not specific to one language (i.e. as a tool to help people understand what a grammatical construct means in any language)
I was literally looking for studies about this and you release this video 😭
Two tips for sleep that have helped me a LOT.
First, no bluish lights for a couple of hours (minimum) before bed. The blue band of the visible light spectrum tells your brain it's daytime, and can interfere with the production of melatonin (the sleep hormone). So use your settings on your phone and computer, etc., to shift the display into the red band or at least out of the blue. (I even turn off my lights for the last hour, with the exception of a lamp that I've covered in a red bandana.)
Second, mentally review how your day went. What were the main things that you did, and that happened to you? Deal with any unresolved feelings about those events if necessary. Then write a list of things you plan to do the next day (works even better if you've already done this-- if you update the list throughout the day. I use my calendar app to schedule them). That way you can set today aside, and remind yourself that you don't need to think about tomorrow (because it's already on your list). This tip helps ensure you're not going to bed thinking about your day or about tomorrow's day.
If this process brings up any dysregulation in your nervous system, use some regulating resources to come back into a calm, safe, peaceful state (if you know what I'm talking about).
Bonus tip (because I forgot to make this list three items long): brush your teeth at least an hour before you go to bed. That way you're not standing under the bright bathroom lights right before going to sleep.
I struggle with sleep because of my history of trauma, and because it just gets harder as people get older. These tips have made a huge difference for me. I hope they'll help someone else as well!
Whoa that second was is cool, can see how it might help.
My best tips: have a wake up time and a bed time… and avoid (excessive) alcohol. I can’t attest to giving it up entirely but anything over 2 drinks royally screws my nights sleep.
You have validated me. I sleep thru everything, but you walk into the room, say my name, I'm awake!
I tell this to people, they don't believe me.
This was interesting to watch. I’ve started working on my German lessons about an hour before bed instead of in the morning, and I’ve noticed a difference. For the last week or so I’ve gone to sleep listening to a German radio station. I usually listen to music to fall asleep anyway so I enjoy it and I think it might help.
Love your videos, this one comes down to it seems is how to simulate real life language learning as much as possible in a new learner situation. A baby and child that learn a new language i.e. their first language, spend their days surrounded with smells and visual cues, they hear their parents talking while they're asleep, and all of these assistive strategies that you're discussing it seems are just trying to simulate what it is to learn a language for the first time
In the first weeks of learning to recognize and read Devanagari, incident to studying Hindi, I enjoyed a few weeks worth of dreams which included instances of being pursued by unknown people who seemed to be waving swords, scythes, sickles, and saws above their heads. The dreams disappeared when the Devanagari letters became comfortably familiar.
I listen to Spanish phrases while I sleep. I always felt it was, at the very least, helpful. Interesting that you gave some data that supports what I was "feeling". Thank you, Sir!! 🥳
Back when I was learning Swedish, I listened to a lot of Swedish radio even before I knew any usable amount. One day I fell asleep while listening to Swedish radio and when I woke up, I understood a conversation in Swedish for the first time in my life. It was some radio play and I still remember that one man was trying to get another to jump in the water, while that other one was arguing that he can't swim. Before that I could only understand things like "homosexual" and "they're dancing naked", dirty mnemonics, as you say.
Being made to process Swedish before the mental barrier of "listening for what you know" could set in might be exactly what you needed. That barrier is also where the "I'm better at my target language after two drinks" meme comes in.
@@constantwin It also helps to avoid confusions that the orthography would cause. You get to learn words the way they are pronounced instead of the way they are written.
I don't see what's so dirty about "homosexual", dancing naked, ok maybe, but maybe they're just naturists
1:00 Technically correct is the best kind of correct.
In studying the nature of learning (I teach weaving and spinning), I have stumbled upon most of these principles, or analogs of them, while watching my students. After some time around the table for the lecture portion, we go to the looms and do work there involving motion. We take a break from at-loom work, and have more lecture time (switch tasks), and when the students then go back to the loom, they are better for having had a break to process what they learned earlier; the break is as important as the lesson.
Similarly, as the Japanese found out in a study of train safety protocols (I read this one some years ago in Smithsonian, but I’m sorry to say I have no citation), the researchers found out that if there were 3 sensory inputs (a physical motion, an auditory input, and an optical input), the subject would not make a mistake, because if one of the inputs was wrong, it introduced cognitive dissonance and shut down the approval process in the brain of the train conductor. Transferred to something more practical to my students, they had to watch, speak and hear a description, and move their arm as they performed a new process; they stopped making mistakes in that process.
As a teacher, I find the nature of learning fascinating! Thanks for the video.
I love DRM's hits like "The Paradigm of Dr. McDermott and Professor Deese", "Eye in the Sleep-Mind", and "Unpsychobabble". Great callback.
Thank you. I was deciding whether to go straight to bed or watch another of your videos. Now I've watched this one and am going to bed, hoping what I learnt about sleep-learning will stick 😊
Not exactly the same, but,…
In 7th grade, when I taking my first foreign language class (German), the class was in the final period of the day. Consequently, the sounds of the German words and sentences, were echoing in my head during the ride home- at the end of every school day. I believe that this was very helpful in my absorbing of the language.
My sleep tip is to avoid super emotional things right before bed, especially things that make me angry! No politics/news. Anger or other high emotion makes it hard to sleep. :) Now I have to go hunt for some Japanese sleep stories.
Thanks!
Thank you!
I’m too worried about waking myself up inadvertently to really try to implement this.
This was a great video! I'm a musician and I'm definitely going to figure out how to effectively implement this into my routine
who knew JapanesePod101 was at the cutting edge of second language acquisition research
xd
The references to the testing of subjects as to what they could remembered got me thinking about whether those means of testing really are ideal and whether they are useful in predicting actual ability in say, having a conversation. My intuition tells me there's no direct correlation between being good at a word memorisation quiz and exhibiting fluency in organic situations. One reason why this makes sense is that these two environments demands different things of us in terms of e.g. how much time we have, how easily distracted we are, how we can use context as help and to what extent we have to be able to have two thoughts in our heads at the same time and keep them straight. And I know from experience that getting perfect grades in language class certainly doesn't directly translate into any semblance of ease when trying to actually speak said language.
I just started implementing a sleep time routine this week (drs. orders). So, low light 1hr before bed, no screens 1/2 hr before bed, deep breathing (inhale for 4, exhale for 6) for 10 min before sleeping. Your vid gave me an incentive to now turn on my Korean podcasts before bed and just let it plays as I fall asleep.
The guided relaxation podcasts in a target language or sleep stories are really nice. Even if I'm not learning Persian, I just like the Persian "stories for sleep" podcasts.
good job Jones. Yet another reason for me to get better sleep that I will tell myself I'll listen to and not end up following (because I procrastinate sleeping lol).
Thank you Dr Jones. Thank you very much
As far as the German speakers learning dutch while asleep, it would be interesting to know the actual words and if they were Platt speakers. The vocab is quite similar anyway.
Hey languageJones. I love your channel. This comment is for the algorithm
Helpful sleep routine stuff:
Have 2 routines - 1 for when you have time and energy to do a solid routine to decompress, clean up, prep for bed and the next day
2nd one for when you have no energy or time - bare minimum
*having 2 routines (1 simple 5 minutes, 1 30+minutes) has made all the difference and I'm so glad I got in the habit before grad school. Now it still helps as a single mom/educator
Cool idea for those wanting to add language learning to their sleep - pick an essential oil that you don't smell often or use a lot -sniff when you go to study and then use in a diffuser when you sleep paired with with YT vids esp made for sleep language learning or podcasts - even better if you know for certain the content you studied that day - does that work for an application? I want to test this out and see how it works!
Honestly, this has been my experience as well. In Latin America we eat late and I was able to warm back up to Spanish faster than my German where the sidewalks roll up after dark. 🤷🏻♀️
I often put a target language audio book or Tv series on as i go to sleep. I get lulled to sleep by the sounds and rhythms of the new language - i spend a few minutes picking out the actual content that i understand - then i get more sleepy and it’s just noise. Dunno if it helps learning BUT - i am not as ‘aware’ and ‘awake’ as something i might stay awake to listen to AND apparently my pronunciation and intonation in my target language is pretty good without me actually paying much attention to it.
Great job as always
I am commenting to boost your rating in the algo so more ppl can find this.
Thank you!
Totally going to try the diffuser trick 🌸
I love the textbook under the pillow commentary! Anyone that has been through finals knows that doesn't work! I can't imagine Spanish is absorbed that way any better than calculus or physics! I'm just amazed that it needed to be pointed out.
Great video. I almost didn’t watch it assuming that you were going to say “Sleeping after studying helps you remember what you study” and end the video.
All of the "Learn a language while you sleep" TH-cam channels will reference you now!
I'm glad you've found dreaming Spanish
I didn’t absorb spanish while the podcast played during my sleep. I was just weary and u motivated to study more as a result. I do thirty min to one hour spanish study morning and again in late evening and do much better with a good sleep. That’s my style.
That's a great style to have!
Doing my part, too. Hope this helps.
Awesome video! 😴
Thank you! 😁
In one of your recent videos you made a side-comment about linguists not even really agreeing on what a word is. I keep thinking about that ever since you said it, and if it's not already on your topics-for-videos list, I'd certainly appreciate a deep-dive into whatever the controversy there is and what the competing ideas are in the linguistics word for the definition of a "word."
I've been studying Japanese, which is written without spaces. If you told me to put a space between each word, there are many cases where it would make just as much sense to me to add a space as to not. Words feel much less "real" to me now
thanks for the learnmaxxing tips!
I put my youngest daughter in a language acquisition/sleep study when she was a toddler. They got a bunch of toddlers, taught them new words (nonsense words, to avoid any previous exposure) naming pictures they saw on a computer. Then one group went home and took a nap while the other group stayed awake. The ones that took naps had much better recall of the new words when they went back a week later.
I realized that it might work when I noticed that the recordings I was listening to infiltrated my dreams. On the other day I remembered that the recording was playing inside my dreams. I also remember that I was already quite annoyed by the sound, at some point I tried to turn it off, I took out my headphones but the sound didn't stop playing because I was in a dream, but the sound was coming from outside. I believe if someone wants to try this, it's a good idea to start journaling about your dreams, it will help copying memories to long term storage.
I am retired. I have Long COVID which messes with my sleep, energy, cognitive thingy. Brain. Anyway, I never go to bed until I'm sleepy. I don't push, and stay up because I want to finish this chapter or whatever. Sleepy? Sleep? Wake up at stupid o'clock? Get up and do stuff.
Obviously impractical for most people, but treating sleep like eating (eat when you're hungry, stop when you're not hungry [NOT when you're FULL]) is what works for my circs.
Great Video. I love your insights.
You mentioned Wynken, Blynken, Nod, and Proust! I'm even more impressed, if that's possible.
I'll occasionally find myself using an expression or construction that I didn't know I knew. I guess that's noticing background information.
That's exactly it. I love those moments where you surprise yourself!
It’s interesting what impacts our dreams or not. Like in tv shows when an alarm in real life is incorporated as, say, a foghorn on a ship in a dream. Or when I listen to Bob Ross while sleeping, every now and then his brush stroke noises (a little chchchcch) will be in my dream as something shaking. So it’s no surprise that certain words, especially ones learned right before sleeping, will make their way back into a dream or two. I also once had a dream about my target language at one point and there was a person on the phone speaking my L2- which at the time I didn’t know. Then there was another person who was translating the phone conversation to me in my dream. Except I barely knew the basics in real life! When I woke up I looked up the words I remembered on Google translate and a bunch of them were correct! However I had done a lot of listening to interviews and songs before that night in my target language, and plus it has the same roots as my first language so now I know why my brain was going crazy! This video actually explains a lot!
I already tried this some time back and found a problem with it.
I can fall asleep listening to English (my first language) fairly easily, but if I try to fall asleep listening to French (my target language) I can feel my brain switching on extra processing power trying to understand what I'm listening to and that keeps me from falling asleep.
Commenting for the algorithm!!
10:25 flashbacks to me as a kid whispering "mom" from the other side of the hallway only for my mom to bolt upright mumbling a sleepy "what"
Thank you!
I'm learning french, somewhere between A2 and B1 according to the AI, and i recently played a stop smoking sleep hypnosis en francais while i was dropping off. Guess what?! I had no desire to smoke the following day!! And no memory of hearing what the hypnotist actually had to say for himself 😮
My guess before the start is no.
Let me say…
Astounded yes
I am not suprised at these findings. Just shows immersion.
I knew about the smell, I even tipped off my students. But combining it with sound: brilliant. And fairly obvious, with all the other things allready known. However, I never thought of it myself...
As an architecture student, I used to take a nap when I got stuck on a design and often would get the solution while sleeping. Later, I would routinely tell my son to review for his test one last time just before he went to bed for the night and it seemed to help. So this makes sense to me.
I love the part of learning a language when I start having dreams partially in the target language. It's so fun when I have to speak Japanese for one reason or another in a dream, and lately I've been hearing some chinese here and there.
I'll try the scent technique for sure
Your question is really interesting! While there might be some curiosity about learning a language during sleep, I wonder if there are any studies on the effects of listening to sounds while sleeping. Personally, it doesn’t seem healthy to me, as sleep quality could be disrupted. Sleeping in a quiet environment seems more beneficial for proper rest and overall well-being.
Loved the video. So would it be better to study or review the language right before going to bed?
It seems like that may well be the case. Although I find, personally, that if I'm too tired, it's not effective. So there's probably a sweet spot a few hours before bed.
Having it put so simply really shook me. If sleep gives such a direct and obvious benefit, the absence of good sleep represents directly squandered potential. I'm obviously aware that sleep is important, but for some reason the thought of all that missed potential, all the connections my brain doesn't have time to make because I'm sitting here typing a comment on TH-cam instead of going to sleep,..
ok goodnight
That's interesting. I honestly would have thought that phonology was also trainable while sleeping, given, as you say, that keyword and affect recognition are online. And I find myself wanting to repeat the study varying the morphological style of the language, because my engineering background makes me want to propose the hypothesis that basically you might be able do filters and finite state machines, but not stacks, while asleep.
You can definitely learn a language while sleeping with someone who speaks that language 😁
Great subject
If Adam Neely majored in linguistics, this awesome guy!
I suspect when the sleeping mind is reminded of recently learnt words with verbal and non verbal cues that increases the time spent recalling the learnt material.
Video starts 3:12
I've read that the area of the brain responsible for smell is close to the hippocampus, so stimulating the brain with smell may also stimulate memory encoding. It's suggested that having a scent nebuliser and putting a variety of scents through it can retard the onset of dementia. I'm probably getting all this wrong, but IIRC I read it in a newsletter from a neurologist called Dr. Joshua Turknett, who has a neuroscience-based music course for banjo called Brainjo. Worth looking at if you are interested in the science of learning even if you don't care about music instruction.
So, is it better to study in the evening because it's closer to bedtime, or is the only thing that matters getting a good night's sleep?
Tip: Audio books for white noise.
Fascinating
Excellent new info for me! I first heard of some of these related concepts in 1978 when I was 20 and learning German, my first new language to study. I saw a news story about a school that taught language learning with an added step of having the students lie down to rest with their eyes closed while listening to a story being played in their target language. The idea was that they would "absorb" some additional learning benefit by listening passively in a relaxed state. I do not recall any results of scientific studies done on this. I am wondering if any of that fits in what you have found out about this topic in your research of it. Is it possible there is an added benefit during the alpha state but not quite asleep state so that the Thalamic Gating is not happening?
Has anyone tried eating a book to absorb it's knowledge yet?
I have Parosmia, which means I have no idea what I am smelling, unless someone tells me what it is. What however works incredibly well for me is music. So I combine most of my language learning with music. Either some calming instrumental in the background, one or two songs repeatedly, or I'll blast metal to keep myself from just paying for my french friends english or german courses. I've found that often when I am doing something completely unrelated, days or even weeks later and a song that I was listening to repeatedly while studying comes on, I'll suddenly remember bits and pieces of what I was learning doing that time. Same thing works with stories or sound effects. I think of steps crunching in the snow and some wind blowing, and I instantly remember the full lyrics and melody of a song I like, because that was the first thing happening in the music video.
While I practice a new passage on the piano, I don't improve much. But the next day I notice a significant improvement!
my sleeptime routine is wild today. I stay up late for my newborn's feedings
News Flash, sleep is good for you!
So, is the same true for meditation? Since meditation is designed to quiet the mind and reduce the 'influx of noise', will it also help with the consolidation of learned information?
I was thinking about someone utilizing the memory palace technique while lucid dreaming. But, you covered that when you said that the encoding has to be done while awake.
My mom talks about how she took a music appreciation class in college and had trouble remembering the various songs, so she listened to the music while she was sleeping, and somehow she aced the test
When you cover a study like this, would you mind also talking about the size of the effect? How much better did the people who listened or smelled actually do?
I knew I couldn't be the only one who'd heard of *Rememberance of Things Past*!
But were you familiar with "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod"?
From a previous video I decided to buy Modality and Mood in Romance!!
Enjoy!!!
Have you heard about these extreme cases where people go into comas and come out speaking their non-native language while forgetting their native language?
I haven’t heard this but it is interesting to look into.
Sleep routine. I go to bed and get up at about the same time every work day (weekends are within 2 hrs), plus have a smart bulb w/a wakeup program that is set for 5 min before my alarm.
I work 6a-230p.
Doing my part 'for the algorithm' :)