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Hi, Steve! How can I know the Real meaning of a word? Many times I look up the meaning in online dictionaries and google, google tranlator and chatgpt, but I feel so lost and confused, because the meaning of the word in a particular context, doesn't match with the context. There are many meanings for only one word. 😥 What should I do?
I'm learning English, and I was watching the movie Fast and Furious 1, a movie about races, and the sentence was: I used to drag here back in high school. To drag in that context is to race for a short period of time, in my language Brazilian Portuguese We say🇧🇷: Tirar um racha. São corridas de arrancada. Drag race! To drag is a slang in that context? Even if a word is a slang, when I search for the meaning on Google, still there're a lot of meanings, and again I feel so lost and confused about the Real meaning to that context.
Здравствуй, Стив! У меня есть вопрос для твоего стрима. Я смотрел твоё первое видео в этом плейлисте, где ты даёшь новогоднее обещание себе, что будешь получать удовольствие от процесса обучения языкам. Ты указываешь, что на Lingq существуют системы мотивации, например, челленджи и монеты, но это всё не главное. Я полностью с тобой согласен! Может быть ты читал книгу Альфи Кона "Наказание наградой", в которой рассказывается, что наше общество во-многом построено на ошибочно представлении о мотивации - что внешними стимулами можно повысить мотивацию. На самом деле это два разных типа мотивации: внешняя и внутренняя, и внешняя мотивация не поддерживает внутреннюю, которая обычно сильнее и и стабильнее, а наоборот, подавляет её. Некоторое время назад я занимался на Lingq, но потом заметил, что стал выполнять минимальное количество заданий, только чтобы сохранить прогресс, при это совершенно не получал от этого удовольствия. Так вот, мой вопрос: не хотел бы ты рассмотреть вопрос пересмотра системы мотивации на Lingq? Я много размышляю на эти темы и был бы рад обсудить с тобой то, как можно это сделать. Можно создать локальный проект, чтобы проверить эти теории, а в случае успеха, мы смогли бы помочь огромному количеству людей осваивать языки успешнее и привлечь на Lingq больше пользователей. P. S. Спасибо за то, что высказываешься по поводу войны в Украине! Я из России, но после начала войны мы с женой уехали из России в знак протеста и ради своей безопасности. Сейчас мы живём в Аргентине и мы очень благодарны всем тем добрым людям, которых мы встретили за границей и которые помогали нам.
@@berlin3918 My suggestion would be: use academic dictionary. A book is a book. Online translaters are only shortcuts, which can be good but not in a long term.
@@berlin3918I feel your pain because I was going through the same situation back in the days,but I can give a piece of advice about it.For example,if a word has 5 different meanings you can try to familiarize yourself with them 5 one by one .Like today,you can challenge yourself to use the word in only one of the 5 different contexts until you master it well and tomorrow,try to learn it in a different context and so on. Never try to learn them all at the same time at the beginning
I think what people tend to forget is what true „learning“ is. Being able to recall something after a certain amount of time does not mean you „learned it“ in my experience. The degree to which something seems to deeply engrain into your brain when you use it everyday for a long time in different circumstances, the moment when you stop thinking about a word in its different translations for example and just KNOW what someone said or wrote when you look at it, that is so different and there is no shortcut to achieving that. You can memorize a few thousand words or characters in a few months, but they will hang in your head very loosely and won’t be of great use, at least that’s what my experience was with things like Anki. The return for the time and effort invested is extremely small compared to just natural exposure to the language.
In defense of Anki: I use it ~10 minutes a day and feel it works pretty well for me. But I use it for words that I have looked up (encountering them in a book or tv-show), and want to be sure I don’t forget again. Small but key difference in my opinion, trying not to forget something that appears useful to know, instead of using Anki as a main source of learning new things/words.
@@PeterSmitGroningen what's so bad about forgetting? Forgetting is an important part of learning and if the words are relevant and frequently used in your TL, then they will come up often enough anyway.
@@Syssn3ckDepends. We forget things all the time, that’s normal. But when I read a book, and I realize that it’s already the 3rd time I’m looking up the same word… that just feels useless to me. Also I realized after reading a lot that I didn’t know how certain a words sound (especially words with irregular accent), so I add some audio (from a Text-To-Speech service for instance) to the Anki card. Two birds in one stone. I’m not saying everyone should use Anki, or that it should be your main tool. Just that I like using it to keep newly learned words and concepts stick a little better in my head. Steve doesn’t like it, that’s clear, but he does like other tooling to help with learning like LingQ. What is your approach? What works for you?
@@PeterSmitGroningen fair enough and it seems like you found an approach that works well for you. Personally, I don't have the discipline and motivation to do that (that's probably the main reason for me 😅). For my Spanish, I currently don't worry about output too much and just get more input via intermediate podcasts and the occasional graded reader thrown in to keep things fresh. I started two video games in Spanish over the past few weeks, just to test the waters, and I was surprised that I could mostly follow along, but my comprehension is still on the low end and so I put it aside for now. My English will go into maintenance mode in the next few months so I can ramp up on my Spanish input. I'm at a point, where the curse of diminishing returns leads me to think, that my time would be better invested in another language. I help kids with their reading fluency in German and it's interesting to see the similarities of struggles that we have to overcome. All in all, I think nothing beats the amount of time we spend in contact with the language, but how we do that and what is enjoyable may differ greatly from person to person.
I agree 100% that time spent with the language is the main driver. The tools are just there to make the process a little more enjoyable or frictionless
Hey Steve! Congrats on the huge milestone. Here is my question: How many hours a day did you spend when you first learned Chinese and Japanese in order to become fluent and if you could go back, would you do anything differently to be more efficient? Been using LingQ for a while now for Japanese and I'm really enjoying it!
Bro, I'm studying Japanese 1 hour every day . some days I study 2 hours but it's becomes boring and stressful. I still think that 1 hour is not enough for me😢.I'm learning English too, I'm trying to do my best every day, when I find a video in Japanese on you tube there are a lot of unknown kanji an vocabulary. I started learning in 2022
@@fillipe6732It might help you to accept the fact that there will be a lot you won’t understand for a long time and it’s totally fine. You’re learning it, it’s necessary and natural to not be able to do something for it to be learned. But you can still enjoy content where you don’t understand many things. A lot of communication goes through context, tone and mimic I found, even in anime where you can’t see real faces at all. Be patient, I am sure you’ll do fine 👍
@flashgordon6510 Yes, I read and listen to a large variety of subjects that I can understand a little bit. Generally, I'm watching TH-cam videos , interviews and online newspapers in both languages:English and Japanese
People sometimes talk about subjects without knowing much about them or without thinking much about them - They just want to show off, show how eloquent they are, Steve Kaufmann however talks about his experiences - His speeches are never empty!
And you can't do it all in 6 months. There's just so much your brain can retain at a time. It needs rest. So, realistically, to get good in a language one needs at least 2-3 years. Many become great talkers before that, but acquiring a large vocabulary takes time.
Sort of, the shortcuts only really apply to the early stages when you don't know anything. You need a few shortcuts to get good enough to where you're not miserably using the language. When I was living in China learning Mandarin, I had to get from basically zero to some usable level of fluency as quickly as possible. It was a practical thing that I couldn't just spend a bunch of time with my head in books or watching movies. So, I memorized entire sentences for basic things like eating. I'd learn sentence frames and the things that were allowed to go into them and it got me far enough in a matter of a few months that I could largely function. That being said, that's about as far as you're likely to ever go doing that. Beyond that memorizing phrases and sentences benefits you at most in terms of helping you to follow along with the things you're reading and hearing. You get a bit like that, but not really that much.
When he speaks about your brain knowing what you're supposed to do but still wanting to revert to your native language! Truth. I definitely experience that. Sometimes I speak a Korean sentence and then I'll stop and just say "wow I just Englished all over that thing!" Yeah, it's technically using Korean words but it said in a very Englishy way.
Ok, 50% of a language is made with 500 words, (a, and, or, etc.) which I find easy. The problem is that native speakers mix in another 50,000 words in between these 500 words. It's the 50,000 words and their forms (cases etc.) that I struggle with.
C Cordialement de Montréal, votre ville d'origine! Didier Cher Steve! Un grand bonjour de Montréal. Je suis vos vidéos depuis longtemps et les trouve toujours passionnantes. J'apprends le japonais de manière intensive depuis 3ans et, cette semaine, je commence un livre scolaire unilingue en japonais pour les élèves du primaire. Comme vous le dites, il faut prendre du plaisir dans l'apprentissage des langues. Cela me plaît énormément de lire en japonais - sans traduction.
I've been using Mnemonics for about half a year, and found them to be extremely useful in learning lists of vocab quickly. At first I did find it difficult to come up with images that worked - some worked well; others didn't - and I did find it time consuming. However, like everything else, the more you practice the easier it gets, and I have got better at thinking up mnemonics that work, and I can do it very quickly - in usually, no more than a few minutes now. If I can't think of anything, I'll leave it and move on - and usually come up with something later.. I'm learning Japanese right now, and I'm pretty sure I would be finding it much more difficult without mnemonics. I still regularly astonish myself, when I find I can recall a set of words which I heard for the first time several hours, or a day before - without any repetition practice. And when I do add repetition to my practice (in combination with the mnemonics), I'm able to commit new pieces of language to long-term memory very quickly. So, in my experience, mnemonics are an extremely valuable tool, and well worth the time invested in developing that skill.
I've also been learning Japanese, and mnemonics have been a tremendous help when learning kanji. Especially for the more complex ones, being able to break them down into parts and create a mental image or story has really helped me recall new characters. I've been using Wanikani, and it's been great for those reasons. It doesn't focus as much on vocab or sentence structure, so LingQ has been helpfully for that.
@@oswaldocaminos8431 If it's for the Kanji, the correct way to do that is to learn the components and what sort of components they are and structure the mnemonics around that. Kanji is pretty annoying compared with learning them as part of Chinese because they have more possible ways of being read. Chinese characters rarely have more than 2 possible ways of being read, and it's usually because the character is the result of multiple characters having been merged at some point. Outlier linguistics has some pretty good resources for characters whether they're being used in Mandarin or Japanese.
Congratulations Steve! Thank you very much for your videos, they mean a lot to all of us! The questions I wanted to ask are 1. Can you give your opinion on Mandarin Blueprint method? I’m both subscribed to LingQ and them but I’m switching to LingQ more and more as I progress. Their method of learning Chinese is quite different from yours. 2. Do you believe that the quality of language learning drops when you are simultaneously occupied by physical activity? You usually say that you listen to podcasts while running - do you think that you are equally productive when combining running and listening just as when you are listening at your desk? 3. Have you noticed that a short break after a hard studying period increases your level? I was learning Dutch daily for 3 hours for a year, took a test and almost failed. Then after 2 month of no practice it felt like the language was finally digested and I got C1 without almost any prior training. Thank you very much once again! All the best to you and your channel!
I agree with most things Kauffmann said, however Feriss' advice on using mnemonics works wonders. Kauffmann says it takes a lot of time to create these associations, but you can do them in a minute or so. What takes a much longer time is hoping the same word will appear again and again, and if it does, hoping your brain will retain it. Some deliberate effort to learn does pay off.
I gave them a shot but most of the words in my language have similar sounding syllables therefore it took me more time to create associations. Do they work for grammar and corrections?
I have to comment on the making the same mistakes week after week with your tutor. I took online Japanese small classes and this website offered several classes taught by a few teachers. Once in a while they would get a new teacher etc. but usually they were regular. I remember one new teacher and I was kind of excited because she was a young and kind of pretty. Well, she taught us a lesson... and explained a few expressions, grammar etc. The lessons aren't designed to review material but for whatever reason we asked the same questions about the same things again and she had to explain the EXACT same things again to us... and I think I was the only one who even noticed that she explained this the week before (And I only noticed AFTER she explained it again). I could tell by the look on her face she might not be the patient type that's able to explain things over and over and over to adults that can't remember much. She was gone shortly after. When you find someone who really can explain something to you over and over even though you're a dumb foreigner that just doesn't get it.. you've found someone special. Patient teachers are the best.
yep,when i begin to learn a new language,sometimes just like,you know,jues like i am a little baby,but a adulted baby, so when someone gald to answer to me the same question over and over again,it to me is very helpful.
Playing fluently piano takes me 10 years. I think language is pretty similar. I don’t say it « must »take. It's an average, depending on how you use it, how you are involved. So could take 5 years for really quick studies. But 5 years it’s not one week 😅. Even in my own mother tongue I'm not fluent in subjects I don't master such as car mechanics, hydrocarbons or politics 😅. I am fluent in subjects that I enjoy.
Hey, Steve! How are you? I study 4 languages (English, Spanish, Japanes and korean.) I"m Brazilian, my language native is portuguese. My biggest difficulty is remembering specific vocabulary when I need it. I can't express my thoughts properly because I don't remember the words that represent what I want to say... How can I improve?
Greetings from a fellow Brazilian! It's quite hard to find those of us who also like learning languages, but just in this comment section I already found three - excluding myself, of course. Our language sets us in a good spot for learning other ones, structurally and phonetically. It's a shame many Brazilians don't even give themselves a chance to language learning - or just fall in the whole language, mostly English, course scams - e.g. in my school, besides me, only two other students speak English. Eu podia ter respondido em português, mas segui no inglês só por coêrencia mesmo. Fora que é bem provável que outros que leiam esse comentário não falem Português, enfim
What are your opinions/experiences of language exchange applications that allow regular correspondence with native speakers through messaging and phone/video calls? How much time would you allocate to these exchanges, compared to the usual input methods of reading books and listening to podcasts?
Hello Steve. Congratulations on reaching a million subscribers :) This is my question: How should I learn Arabic? If I understand correctly, you recommend learning languages through reading. However, this is impossible in Arabic since the written (al-Fusha) and vernacular (al-Amiya) languages are completely different. Also, I should tell you I am from Israel, so going to an Arab country, especially now, is completely out of the question
The 12 sentence method is good only for those who are absolute beginners and have never studied a 2nd language and don’t have the confidence to speak in that language. That’s what it is at most though.
Reading and listening is the best way to really improve, but once to use a word you have to really understand it to let your brain be confident to prompt you when you speak.
Hello Steve! Congratulations on reaching 1 million subscribers! Your videos and LingQ kind of "restarted" my passion for language learning. My question is: Are there any plans at LingQ to make more courses free? Like Icelandic and Ukrainian. Thank you. Greetings from Belarus.
One question I have is that when you are listening to the language in the early stages, do you have to pay attention to it? Like if I am cleaning or playing a video game or something and not really paying attention to what I am listening to, does that affect how much I get out of listening? Love your videos, and have a great day!
you will learn almost nothing with that strategy. it needs to be active listening. It's the reason why people can move to a foreign country and live there for years without ever learning the local language. Unless you intentionally try to decipher what you're hearing you won't make progress. Google "is passive listening effective?" for more insight on this topic if you want.
Thank you for sharing The 13-sentence method. I don’t see it as the destination, but rather as a helpful jumping off board from which to start learning some of the intricacies of a new language.
Memorized sentences is where I usually start when I've got a new language that I need to be able to manage in. It helps me know that if I pronounce that correctly, I can focus on the response that I'm getting rather than just on what I'm saying. After that, I'll usually learn a bunch of sentence frames and what's allowed to go into the blanks. Then, it's just a lot of practice and exposure for the rest of it. The first two bits are definitely shortcuts as there are longer ways of doing it, but I got a ton out of doing it with Mandarin when I was living in China and needing to get things done on my own. I started with effectively zero Mandarin and within a couple months I knew enough to be able to feed myself and get around. I could even travel city to city by bus without too much trouble. That being said, there's still a ton that I don't know because I haven't really studied long enough, and that's basically just going to be a combination of book learning and exposure to the rules alongside actual exposure to real media and learning whatever grammar and vocab makes that easier.
I very much agree with your points. However, I do think that a little bit of spaced repetition is helpful. In the same way, when we were kids we were taught some words through repetition. I have been using Linq for a week now, and it's an incredible tool. I'm amazed by the almost limitless possibilities it provides for language learning. My only gripe is that the translations are unreliable and there is no grammar explanation aside from the bare minimum grammar guide that it has. It's okay for more advanced learners, but for beginners and maybe intermediate learners it would be a bit unproductive. One can argue that we learned language as children without beinf taught grammar, but I would argue back that it took very long and there's no reason to emulate babies when we as grown-ups can learn in a more efficient way. I wish Linq had some more complex content that are actually manually translated and contains some necessary grammar points.
Thanks for the videos Steve. I'm born bilingual English and Hungarian in NJ... Then at age 50 you and others got me to go full on into Spanish reading Harry Potter. Never missed a day for 3 years. Now I'm onto french because of you and Olly and others.
can i ask you,when your beginning stage to learn spanish,what did you do for it,i mean,reading Harry potter in a new language is very difficult.because it is not very easy for beginner. i am a native Chinese speaker,i tired to read harry potter in english two months ago,but it is too difficult for me,so many difficult adjective and some difficult words.i fell that reading it in a foreign language is to hard.so i can't consist to read it. can i get some experience about how to improve reading skull of a foreign language from you?
@@陈沉沉-m2v . Sorry I just saw this. Well English and Spanish were similar enough. And Spanish is easy to pronounce and is spelled very much like it sounds. This is not the case for french. To go from Chinese to English seems like a tough crossover with Harry Potter. For french I'm watching more tv and movies and trying to not have subtitles on at all after I've seen it once. Then I retry reading every couple weeks. Sorry I don't have better answers. But I'd say do anything that you will keep doing every day and you'll get somewhere
@@lazstan Thinks for your reply.I am very appreciate it!Since i've send that comment to you,two months have been pass. Even thought i've said that reading harry potter in english was too difficult for me four months ago.But now i can almost understand the first book of harry potter series.Harry potter and philosophy stone.Due to keeping learning.Not only my reading ability but also my listening and writing and speaking capability have a great breakthrough.According my own experience,I one hundred persent agree with what you have said in the comment applied to me.Keeping do it every day will make you better and better.
Firstly, thank you so much for the amazing advice and help you give us! 😀 Secondly, here's my question: How do you (as in you personally) decide which language to study next? Could you give us some general guidelines to help us make our own decisions on this as well, please?
How effective has your general approach of "dont spend too much time on grammar and just let the language wash over you" been when studying a language as gramatically complex as Arabic? Congratulations on one million!
I think a lot of people don't realize how many skills are needed to be in a conversation. As I learn Italian, I find I can understand the conversations of others as long as I am not taking part in the conversation.
It's a generatonal thing, in my opinion. Nowadays especially because the internet exists and there is so much information available, people tend to think learning in the traditional sense is no longer necessary and to know something comes easy, this isn't the case. Learning a foreign language is just a proof of that misunderstanding, to comprehend and be able to use a language demands concentration, motivation and a lot of practice, there is no short cut....
I would like to know (maybe if you have a statistic or just from experience) how much harder is it to learn your first foreign language than the second?
That's a great question, since i've been in language learning for quite a while, and still am fluent in only two (getting there with German though). Although what often makes me wonder about that, is that I've learned English from just exposure online in about two years, with minimal effort and no actual goal of "learning English" - it was more of a "understanding what all these folks are talking about"
@@gamingwithpurg3anarchy157 My native language is Portuguese. It's nice to see somebody taking such effort and time into learning our language, I really appreciate it!
You wouldn't invest a lot of time into mnemonics. You'd select a smaller number of important words that aren't sticking, and use mnemonics on those. You'd also use it for things like learning Chinese Characters as it's faster to decompose the characters into their components and memorize their placement and combination with mnemonics than other methods. When I do it, I quickly generate the mnemonic, and I don't even bother to memorize that. I'm just trying to generate what Harry Lorrayne referred to as "original awareness" of the word. If I do that with the words that I really need, or want to know, over time that will speed things up a bit and make the process of using, and enjoying, the language a lot more pleasant. But, I do completely agree, that there's little point in forced memorization in this method, at best that gives you a hook to hold the other meanings and you're looking at potentially 10-20k words to be fluent.
Tim Ferris is referencing Michel Thomas's method of word association. I remember listening to Thomas, talking about the word ARROZ in spanish suggesting we imagine lots of arrows, but the word ARROZ is really the same as the word RICE. Same with SUGAR AZUCAR SUCRE ZUCHHERO, if you know one, understanding the others (atleast in related languages) should not be rocket science. Not saying that it is always the case especially the further away we get from our native language. There is only one way in which language enters our speech cortex, it is the same for the first, second or eleventh language, there are no hacks, you can only speed it up by participating more in the language. We should understand that the meaning of a word or a phrase comes not from translation but our brain forms or applies meaning to said expression over time with experience. If it did not, we would have to look up every word in a dictionary or have every word explained to us and that didn't happen in our first language and won't happen in a second etc.
Mr.Kauffman may you be blessed for eternity. Even when pronunciation's not your primary goal back in the day you did work on your pronunciation in French and Chinese.. what kind of training did you do or which activities did you engage in back in the day, besides massive input?
Personally, I recommend minimal pairs and working to identify which one it is until you can hear the difference. (A minimal pair is just a pair of words that are only separated by a sound. For example, that and fat, they only differ in that initial th versus f) Once you hear the difference, then you should be able to focus on making the correct sound and identifying it as you speak. And yes, that works with tones, it's just that the tones are another layer. You'd learn the 4 tones of Mandarin, then you'd learn the pairs of tones, then you'd work to replicate entire sentences in the language to get a more natural tone sandhi. It didn't take me that long to get that down to the point where I could get myself in trouble because the folks I was talking to thought I knew far more Mandarin than I needed. (Having the language on in the background at all times will help that as well, this is an exception to the rule about not being able to learn by mindless exposure)
Wrong. You keep forgetting an important fact. As a retired person who has nothing better to do than just sit at home and keep yourself busy with this hobby - learning for the sake of learning. But for most people its not the case:they have very little free time AND they have a specific purpose to learn a language - to travel or work or relocate. Speaking like a native is a very rare objective, although always a desirable one. Most ppl dont learn to be conversationaly fluent. They learn to resolve specific problems. Thats why your approach - learn everything, every moment of your life to become perfect in everything doesnt work for them. They DO need shortcuts. And guess what - even an impetfect conversation gets them to resolve those problems - be it participating in a business confi-call, or ordering a taxi. And the shortcuts DO work. Those 12 sentences is a fab idea. The high frequency words is a fab idea. Marvelous. They will not get you read Shakspire. Neither will you speak like one. but you will certainly resolve most issues around you and go home happy. Which is the original reason why you started learning a new language.
For me it's a little bit of a catch 22 with language learning. Until you can read and understand content that you're interested in (even while looking up words like on LingQ), immersing is just painful and in fact it feels like you're just doing flash cards even. So it seems like why not just do flash cards where you know for sure they'll repeat consistently and you'll at least get things right albeit either out of context or just repeating the same context (sentence and or picture) over and over. Sure it would be better to immerse in interesting content but until you're a strong B1 or B2 that's just not possible at least not in a meaningful way. You can plow through it anyway hoping for the best. Which I do. One reason I think people like conversations is that they're like graded readers in a way because the person you're talking to is going to try to grade their speaking level to accommodate your lower level. Sure, if they have to grade their language too much it's not a fluent conversation really but for a lot of people it's better than reading a book. A lot more meaningful. If you can find people to talk to anyway.
A good rule of thumb: if you're the type of person who's looking for a shortcut, an easy way, a trick, a quick fix, etc., then don't bother with languages. Languages, like so many worthwhile things, take both effort and time. Finding efficiencies is one thing, but so many language channels and apps prey on insecure, gullible learners, making them think that if they only do this or buy that, they'll suddenly gain the magical language shortcut that far smarter people haven't been able to come up with for millennia. A lot of speakers never become highly skilled with their mother tongue, despite many years of exposure and schooling, so don't expect a magic pill for a foreign language, even for a rudimentary level of conversational fluency, let alone actual eloquence, correctness, and precision in speech and writing.
Congratulations on the well-deserved subscriber count! You've been such a source of encouragement on my Japanese language journey. I wish you continued success!
Vaca is cow or vache or mucca oder kuh, and that's it. That's the kind word you learn very fast but if his example were, say, convencer, then it's convince, convaincre and convincere (I guess) and no idea in German, which I barely reached A1. Yes, you could learn only 500 words, only the me and you conjugations, and a set of 100 phrases and force fluent speakers to speak your simplified lingo so that you can understand, but that doesn't make you a polyglot. It could be a first step, it could be a good hack for a trip you decided to take to Serbia in 2 weeks, but something like that should never be the end goal of any language living person. "I finished learning my 500 words in this Greek. I'm done with it. Next language Herr I come." That would make some sense to me, if you know 3 or 4 languages well, and doesn't want to commit to any new language but still wants to know a bit about other languages, their alphabets, how their grammar works, their vocab similarities to the languages you know, etc... Something that would interest more the linguist type. Still, nothing is lost when it comes to language learning, but that approach is definitely not my cup of tea.
Hola Steve, llevo meses utilizando la aplicación de LingQ y me ha gustado, no se a veces pienso que estoy estudiando mal y por eso no avanzo, podrías hacer un vídeo en como tú estudias en LingQ, como por ejemplo en qué momento pasas a otra lección o cuántas veces repites la lección y cosas así, me ayudaría muchísimo
A mi también me parece una buena idea que haga un video sobre eso! Me encantaría ver sus métodos. Yo soy bastante novatillo con Lingq, pero por ahora me está yendo bien. Como utilizas Lingq? Por que crees exactamente que no estás avanzando? Espero que pronto sientas que estás teniendo éxito con tus estudios! Ánimo!
@@BERRUEZA más que todo por el tema de avanzar de nivel, me tomo como 4 meses para avanzar a principiantes 2 y eso que le dedicó de 2 a 4 horas al estudio, entonces no sé si es que estoy repitiendo mucho los capítulos o le dedicó mucho tiempo a un capítulo que no conozco. (estoy estudiando inglés)
@@deivid7200 Le dedicas de 2 a 4 horas todos los días? De ese tiempo, cuanto lo pasas en Lingq? Cuando empecé a usar Lingq, me vi varios videos en TH-cam sobre como utilizar/estudiar en Lingq de una manera eficiente, y aunque los videos que me vi eran en Inglés, seguro que puedes encontrar videos similares en Español. Te lo recomiendo! Podrán explicarte a fondo como usarlo mejor de lo que te podría yo explicarte aquí por escrito. Quizá lo que te está produciendo supuesto atasco, o el parecer que no avanzas, es tan simple como que no estás exponiéndote a contenido mas complicado o avanzado, es decir, mas complicado o avanzado para ti. Uno se puede quedar atascado sin avanzar por el hecho de que piensa que tiene que entender todo al 100%, antes de seguir adelante. Esto es incorrecto, o al menos innecesario. No conozco la lección que mencionas "principiantes 2", pero te sugiero probar ir al siguiente nivel, a ver como te va. Luego vuelve al principiantes 2 a ver si lo entiendes algo mejor. Hay que darle tiempo al cerebro que procese toda la información nueva que le estás dando. Y por su puesto combinar el estudio con un montón de "input", mucho mas que el propio estudio, ésta parte es suuuper importante! Mírate videos de TH-cam en Inglés, contenido más o menos a tu nivel, o alguna serie en Inglés. Eso te ayudará tremendamente. Lo último que diré es que 4 meses no es "demasiado" tiempo. No te preocupes de eso. Tu ve a tu paso, y que los demás vayan al suyo. Cuanto más tiempo le dediques, más entenderás; y recuerda que 1 hora al día consistentemente, tras varios mese, es mucho más efectivo que 2 a 4 horas unos cuantos días. La consistencia todos los días es la clave.
@@BERRUEZA de las 2 o 4 horas que estudiaba todo el tiempo era en LingQ, igualmente todo los días, yo creo que es lo que tú dices que le hasta que no sepa las cosas al 100% no paso a la siguiente, de igual manera, solo estoy estudiando una hora y pues tratando de no repetir tanto y consumir cosas nuevas
It's so cool to see the progress you've made over the years with this channel and your app project. I love the refreshing takes you've done lately, where you challenge ideas. My question is: Do you have any favorite books in Mandarin Chinese, any subject.
I agree that people who chase shortcuts more often than not have bought into a delusion; something along the lines of obtaining a baby in a month with 9 women involved in the project. But when it comes to naturally occurring scenarios in which to experience and then acquire the new language, we've got to put thought into how to set that up. If we're living in a country where the desired language is spoken, and we're unavoidably surrounded by speakers of that language, then natural situations for acquiring this language are what our daily life consists of. But if we're trying to learn a language without being surrounded by speakers of that language in 'real life' (whatever that is), then we have to find another way of experiencing everyday life in that language. Reading is always beneficial, in my experience at least. But to be able to first understand and then speak the language, I find that TV serials, especially detectives, are particularly helpful. Sure, that doesn't help you if you need to learn the language of a small African tribe, but in that case you probably know that going and staying there for a while is probably your only choice. I just want to emphasise that to speak well, we have to understand what others are saying first. And for that, we need regular exposure to speech in that language, at more or less average speed, in fairly large almost-daily quantities, and in a wide variety of situations that come up in life.
Question and LingQ request: I’m currently learning Thai (requesting to pls bring Thai to LingQ in the future!) primarily through the TH-cam channel “Comprehensible Thai”. The channel emphasizes to just watch and listen and try to acquire the language through comprehensible input from the videos. It’s been helpful so far, but the channel also advises against reading in the beginner stages because they say toddlers first learn to comprehend the language, then they’ll start to speak/output naturally eventually. Only after some certain level comprehension is when they can start to learn how to read (and write). They emphasize a lot of listening first instead of reading since listening will help your ears get used to the sounds of the language. What do you think about this? Do you think reading should only be started after some level of familiarity with the language?
I do support that Thai should be added to LingQ! 😊 Same second question, different wording : does it make sense that we as adults use the same way of learning as toddlers?
Tim Ferris has built an entire career saying hacky things that sound great in theory but that have no actual bearing on reality. Literally nothing he says is helpful.. It's genuinely quite amazing that he's got away with this at this scale
Wow, the mnemonics.. now way this can work for a large vocabulary. I'm sure it'll work well for up to a few hundred words, based from my own experience with Kanji. More than that, it's simply impractical. The way to learn vocabulary is, in a way, indeed based on images, or to be more correct, associations and the brain's "image" (which doesn't have to be an "image" as such). That will cement the meaning, and in my opinion in a much better way than what mnemonics will. (In other words - I'm not a fan of translations as a way to learn words, although sometimes using translations can't be helped. But starting with translations and then using mnemonics.. that's just not a good method, in my opinion)
Congrats on 1M! Question: Do you think there is any correlation between speaking early as a baby and learning a second language as an adult more quickly?
Congrats on the gold TH-cam plaque. !! My questions for the Q&A: -How many hours of Comprehensible Input should you have before you start speaking (ie output) -What is your opinion on watching material in your target language (eg spanish) with subtitles on in the target language (eg spanish) Thanks for sharing
I love watching videos on TH-cam in the language I'm learning and leaving a comment even if the only thing I'm able to say is "nice video, I agree with you". Understanding a language and using it well are two distinct abilities. It's like memorizing recipes and actually cooking something. I'm always trying to have conversations with myself since I usually don't have anybody to practice it, and it's a great way to find the gaps in my knowledge.
I'm at roughly 8,000-10,000 words in Portuguese and still struggle to have basic conversations.. it's just so darn hard increasing my comprehension abilities. Even with words I know often I don't understand what's being said. With a few hundred hours of listening practice. Not all active.. much is passive listening. But definitely over 130 hours is active.
How have you learned so many words but have so little listening time? Did you just use anki? I'm probably at 4-5k words and have 750 hours of listening and reading. Don't really have a problem understanding people now
@@seanmaher8320 I've never used anki no. I don't know my exact listening time. i did say Hundreds of hours.. I only discovered LingQ a year and a half into my 2 years of learning (2 years and 2 months now). On LingQ I have somewhere in the 130 hour range. i don't remember.. but I've watched a lot of yt, listened to a lot of music, podcasts and also watched a couple shows. So it's probably at 300+ hours easily. But it's still super difficult to understand. Getting easier.. but still. (When I watched the shows and listened to most of the podcasts I still had little vocabulary. Recently I've been understanding more and more quickly though. My problem is that I haven't had much talking/phone call time.. the 3 times I've talked my comprehension increased a lot. But I never really have opportunities so 🤷🏻
Hi there Steve! Congrats on the million subscribers milestone :) I have a question for you regarding learning Chinese characters. What would you recommend for the average learner who has around an hour a day for study? At what point should one transition from pinyin to learning characters? Essentially, how much should one already know/understand (comprehension) before committing to learning characters? And what is a good method for learning them / what is a good goal to strive for during the first few months of studying characters? I apologize for the long-winded explanation to my question 😅 Thank you! Borja
I really wish I was obsessed with reading. I can only read 10-20 pages a day of a book a day especially a book in my own native language. I feel like massive reading is the big secret to mastering a foreign language.
Congratulations Steve! Great, well deseved achievement! It's always nice to see people appreciating good and meaningful content on YT. My question for Q&A: my level of spanish is very close to reach C2. I've challenged myself to write a book in that language. Do you think it's a good way of practice and improve or it's a waste of time? Maybe is better to stick to diffrent ways of learning which are less time-consuming? Thank you and greetings from Poland! Dziękuję i jeszcze raz gratuluje! :)
Congratulations on 1 Million! What would you say is the best method for learning romance languages? I'm looking at Brazilian Portuguese in particular but I want to learn the European dialect of Portuguese, Spanish and French afterwards.
Hello Steve. I have few question, do you plan to visit the muslim countries, Iran and Turkey one day? Or country in ex URSS where russian is still speak? I now you read a lot of classical french book like balzac but are you able to read the classic of the other languages? Like Dostoievski in russian or Goethe in german? Because i have the impress that there is an another world of word in it, i'm currently reading confortably bestseller in english but when i want to read the classic like Steinbeck or Conrad i keep struggling a lot with the vocabulary and i'm wondering if it's happen to you too. Another question, it is good to learn many language to reach the intermediate plateau and maintain them for entering after in complete immersion when i will visit the country? Have a good day
Congratulations, Steve! Well-deserved for the interesting and helpful content. My question would be: What is the best way to teach English as a second language in a classroom setting? I will be volunteering as an English teacher in rural Cambodia and want to be effective. Would it be to focus on providing comprehensible input? What is the best way to use classroom time for beginners/mid-level English learners? How would you do it?
What's your IQ ? I think you are blessed since born , have special talent that's why you are able to learn languages so easily while other ppl feel difficulty in even learning 1 language
Jews has been forced to learn unrelated languages in the past 2000 years of exile . Humans carry their ancestral genetic imprint so maybe you are right that he was indeed born with some linguistic talent. I had 2 Israeli schoolmate in Istanbul language school who've passed C2 level Turkish language exam after 5 month of study. I myself found some languages just downloaded itslef to my brain without me putting much effort (yakutsk/Tatar/ Turkish/ Persian/ Chinese/ Japanese/navajo ) while English/ Russian/ Arabic took me quite long to become fluent.
There seems to be lots of videos on TH-cam promising fluency in a few weeks, a few days, a few seconds... And actually they are not wrong!! But they are all talking about baby language, a very simple language, with very simple grammar and vocabulary, used by children. You can use baby language to say whatever you want, and most native speakers will probably understand you. And as long as native speakers also use baby language with you, you will be able to understand them. The problem is that most native speakers don't want to use baby language, don't want to talk to you as if you were a retard or a small child. And also, what is the point of learning a language in the first place? How can I call myself fluent if I am unable to understand normal native media like books, newspapers, films, TV or music? My goal when learning a language is to be able to understand native media so I can get a deep dive into the foreign culture. Baby language is not my goal. And most of these TH-cam videos are talking about baby language.
Congrats for the milestone Steve! My question would be, we know very well how you do your input, but how does the output session looks like? it would be awesome if you can explain in detail.
Congratulations on 1 Mil Steve! For my question: I often find myself keeping listening and reading separate. Aside from watching shows or TH-cam with subtitles, when I read say a book I do it separate from say an audio book, and when I'm listening whilst doing other tasks it's often to a podcast I've never listened to before. I've done this from the very beginning and while listening my comprehension can be pretty low as I've never studied the content say on LingQ or some other resource. I don't really enjoy reading transcripts from podcasts or videos, and often times I can't find audiobooks for what I'm reading. Is this still a viable strategy for improving my listening abilities in the language? I should mention that my listening is improving ever so slightly, but still pales in comparision to my reading.
Thanks 🤩 dear We know that you are right that’s very true, In three months we can learn some vocabulary, but never a language. So thanks 🙏
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Dear Steve. Good morning. I can understand the listening when people talk ( near English 70 %) but now for me it is very difficult to talk fluently and express my ideas about work for example. I feel that I need more and more vocabulary in orden to talk fluenty. Please what do You recommend?. Thank so much. God bless You.
There's some good points in this video but the whole thing is underpinned by this exceptionally high bar for "fluency". 40,000-50,000 words isn't "conversationally fluent", it's native level, a highly academic native at that. Your average person understands about 30,000 words in their native language and thinks to use maybe a quarter of them. If a learner needs to comprehend tens of thousands of words before they are fluent (natural) in everyday conversation they've spent way too long with a nose in a textbook
Tengo una pregunta: En qué países de Latinoamérica tú estuviste? Como sabrás el español tiene muchos acentos y dialectos, con cuál acento tu entiendes bien el Español?
With ADHD its like having a constantly talking voice in your head. When I learned Tagalog I had two man that was tough it was like being two people. Oddly on laguage 3 Portuguese it stopped thank God. Now there is just ohe voice yhe language I am in at that time.
There's nothing wrong with starting with an extremely limited knowledge and vocabulary of a language. It's how we all learn to speak our native tongues. Lots of native speakers of English for example have never read a novel or anything like a college level textbook. Plus they will make routine and repetitive errors in grammar. There's also the example of limited English for air traffic control which is very successful in communicating.
Fluency, language, words, memorization techniques, patterns, techniques...and on...one question of myself trying to learn, would be how much time shall i spend on leaning the theories and techniques? Are these things, prerequisites before i develop my plan to learn a language? Now, it seems some progress is made by incorporating many theories...i think there are a bunch of ghostlighters out there, for senseless reasons. I am amazed, a person can speak fluently in 10 or more languages.. My birth language is American English. I am trying to learn a new language at an age when many say that it is perhaps not possible. Then as i recall Webster's collegiate dictionary from the late 70's. The book form, boasted over 50,000 English words. Thinking back on thus fact, and basing an idea, of learning or knowing 10's of thousands of words to be fluent is not a reality for the conversational masses!? I honestly believe that perhaps i know some of the 50,000 words mentioned, perhaps 25,000? I think i speak quite fluently. And, just another point, ...Standford U., came out several years ago, producing a study, suggesting the average American, using conversational words, avoiding technical jargon, used hardly more than 500 words in a daily routine, speaking the language! What does this indicate regarding knowing, and sensibly using a language???
I am most interested in the creative uses of Korean. Fiction. Poetry. Even song lyrics. With poetry or song lyrics, for instance, there are so many metaphors and similes, rhyme schemes and cultural context that it's quite an undertaking to even get one song completely "understood." But as a language that uses a different alphabet, it has a different beginner stage than the majority of other languages. Learning Hangul. This is how it started: So I'm watching a KPop song on TH-cam with English subtitles. I am sure the translations are wonky, based on everything I know about songwriting. They aren't literal but they aren't lyrics either, they drop both meter and rhyme scheme. I quickly get that translating between Korean and English is weird. I start learning Hangul. But I don't get this "learn Hangul in 20 minutes" stuff. It's taking it own time. Then I come across a short wherein two people have a conversation in English with a literal translation from Japanese. I think of Yoda with his "Happy I am" language. NOW I get it. It's the order of noun, verb, adjective that is most different. How, then, do I approach the task of learning Korean more accurately, if that makes sense? I watch, listen to a video. Or look at a text. I'll go through the video to copy the Hangul, then literally translate it, including the order of noun, verb, adjective as it appears. Only then will I I understand that "xxxxxxx" means "I read Korean fluently" instead of an approximation of that idea, Context is so very important as well, so one sentence won't do. As for romanization, I sometimes use it as a shortcut when learning songs to sing but get rid of it as soon as possible. Yes, you have to slow the videos down to .25 speed sometimes. I feel that until I am fluent with reading and writing Hangul on a very simple level, the majority of time spent looking for patterns and repetitions,, grammar or some kind of "system" of learning would be wasted on me. I also don't think I want to pay for a tutor until I have Hangul better in hand, My learning is not pressured because I enjoy every part of it, I spend hours a day listening to Korean on TH-cam shows or KDramas. Every time another word or phrase either pops out as it's spoken or catches my interest, usually because I've heard it before and then I look it up. As I learn more I find myself speaking the parts that I understand out loud immediately after I hear them. More and more words are popping out all the time. But it's the opposite of speed reading. I admit I am a speed reader and have a huge vocabulary in English. I am also an artist so writing Hangul can be pleasant to me. My questions(FINALLY!!!) is can an individual succeed in learning a language like Korean by building their own method? Am I creating unnecessary frustration by not following tried and true methods? When and what would you advice to add on from learning language resources to help facilitate my growth? And I agree, reading and listening (and writing, for me) are fundamental. Rules come later. Thank you for all you do.
40.000 to 50.000 words? I wish fluent speakers, in any language, knew so many words, but I think this is an overestimation. Take Donald Trump. Is he fluent in English? Sure. Does he know 40.000 words? I doubt it.
I very agree with you. I've done so many techniques as you've had mentions in this videos. If you ask is it help? I can say "yes it is!", but you must put a lot of your energy and time especially to Anki and it is very very much unproductive. Just remember how to learn a language just acquire as Steve said. Take a lot of listening and reading just like that. I've been listening and reading for 3 months. I've improved more than using Anki and others mentioned techniques for 2 years. For real. I've had wasting so much time, but at least I got an experienced for doing a mistake and trial and errors.
The place where I've found SRS most useful is for remembering how to write Chinese characters. What was you strategy for tackling that challenge with your Japanese/Mandarin/Cantonese study? Was just reading at volume really enough for you to be able to remember how to write characters?
I love your channel, Im working on arabic for work and I think its healthy to learn new language. What do you call someone that speaks 2 languages......bilingual. what do you call someone that speaks 1 language........american 😔. Im american and I think this should change. Also what level of proficiency does a person need to speak to get a job a12 b12 c12?
There is a shortcut. If you use passive learning (reading, listening) it will take you a lot of time and it's a lazy way. Try some active encoding with a lot of context, avoid passive rehearsal, don't overload your short term memory and after a month you will never go back to reading and listening as a priority.
For your gold plaque video: I am learning Korean (Basic 2) but the other students seem to be better at understanding the spoken word. It's a little bit demoralising. For example, the teacher might say something and the whole class laughs except me because I didn't get it. ( I am in an immersion class). Any suggestions so I can leapfrog ahead?
My Question: I've buddies up with a native speaker in Portugal online to learn Portuguese. Her English is fluent. My Portuguese is infantile. How could we structure our 1 hour sessions a few times a week so that we both benefit? At this stage we are both spending the time speaking 99% English. Thank you
Dear Steve, I am learn Deutsch A2 at moment however I can understand much more than speak 🗣️. Can you please give some tips how I improve my 🗣️? I have a online tutor now but I would like Focus on Conversations. Big thanks 😊
What is the conversation about? I've been studying Mandarin for a while, and my fluency depends on the topic. Some topics I can talk about freely, others can be humbling. For example, I was talking about life in my home country, and we went on a tangent, and the person started asking me about taxes. And I didn't have the words to describe things as I would have liked to
Language is not math or any other kind of general knowledge. From my experience, each language requires its own compartment in the brain, where things are tightly interweaved. When I try to speak in a language, which I understand on a level of tv or newspaper, I'm pretty sure, the vocabulary is there, but I experience words popping up in my mind from different non-native languages, and never from my mother's language. Seem like brain makes a decision early enough that it is a word from one of the new compartments and pulls words from the most reachable container of a similar color..
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Hi, Steve! How can I know the Real meaning of a word? Many times I look up the meaning in online dictionaries and google, google tranlator and chatgpt, but I feel so lost and confused, because the meaning of the word in a particular context, doesn't match with the context. There are many meanings for only one word. 😥 What should I do?
I'm learning English, and I was watching the movie Fast and Furious 1, a movie about races, and the sentence was: I used to drag here back in high school. To drag in that context is to race for a short period of time, in my language Brazilian Portuguese We say🇧🇷: Tirar um racha. São corridas de arrancada. Drag race! To drag is a slang in that context? Even if a word is a slang, when I search for the meaning on Google, still there're a lot of meanings, and again I feel so lost and confused about the Real meaning to that context.
Здравствуй, Стив!
У меня есть вопрос для твоего стрима.
Я смотрел твоё первое видео в этом плейлисте, где ты даёшь новогоднее обещание себе, что будешь получать удовольствие от процесса обучения языкам. Ты указываешь, что на Lingq существуют системы мотивации, например, челленджи и монеты, но это всё не главное. Я полностью с тобой согласен!
Может быть ты читал книгу Альфи Кона "Наказание наградой", в которой рассказывается, что наше общество во-многом построено на ошибочно представлении о мотивации - что внешними стимулами можно повысить мотивацию. На самом деле это два разных типа мотивации: внешняя и внутренняя, и внешняя мотивация не поддерживает внутреннюю, которая обычно сильнее и и стабильнее, а наоборот, подавляет её. Некоторое время назад я занимался на Lingq, но потом заметил, что стал выполнять минимальное количество заданий, только чтобы сохранить прогресс, при это совершенно не получал от этого удовольствия.
Так вот, мой вопрос: не хотел бы ты рассмотреть вопрос пересмотра системы мотивации на Lingq? Я много размышляю на эти темы и был бы рад обсудить с тобой то, как можно это сделать. Можно создать локальный проект, чтобы проверить эти теории, а в случае успеха, мы смогли бы помочь огромному количеству людей осваивать языки успешнее и привлечь на Lingq больше пользователей.
P. S. Спасибо за то, что высказываешься по поводу войны в Украине! Я из России, но после начала войны мы с женой уехали из России в знак протеста и ради своей безопасности. Сейчас мы живём в Аргентине и мы очень благодарны всем тем добрым людям, которых мы встретили за границей и которые помогали нам.
@@berlin3918 My suggestion would be: use academic dictionary. A book is a book. Online translaters are only shortcuts, which can be good but not in a long term.
@@berlin3918I feel your pain because I was going through the same situation back in the days,but I can give a piece of advice about it.For example,if a word has 5 different meanings you can try to familiarize yourself with them 5 one by one .Like today,you can challenge yourself to use the word in only one of the 5 different contexts until you master it well and tomorrow,try to learn it in a different context and so on.
Never try to learn them all at the same time at the beginning
I think what people tend to forget is what true „learning“ is. Being able to recall something after a certain amount of time does not mean you „learned it“ in my experience. The degree to which something seems to deeply engrain into your brain when you use it everyday for a long time in different circumstances, the moment when you stop thinking about a word in its different translations for example and just KNOW what someone said or wrote when you look at it, that is so different and there is no shortcut to achieving that. You can memorize a few thousand words or characters in a few months, but they will hang in your head very loosely and won’t be of great use, at least that’s what my experience was with things like Anki. The return for the time and effort invested is extremely small compared to just natural exposure to the language.
In defense of Anki: I use it ~10 minutes a day and feel it works pretty well for me. But I use it for words that I have looked up (encountering them in a book or tv-show), and want to be sure I don’t forget again. Small but key difference in my opinion, trying not to forget something that appears useful to know, instead of using Anki as a main source of learning new things/words.
@@PeterSmitGroningen what's so bad about forgetting? Forgetting is an important part of learning and if the words are relevant and frequently used in your TL, then they will come up often enough anyway.
@@Syssn3ckDepends. We forget things all the time, that’s normal. But when I read a book, and I realize that it’s already the 3rd time I’m looking up the same word… that just feels useless to me. Also I realized after reading a lot that I didn’t know how certain a words sound (especially words with irregular accent), so I add some audio (from a Text-To-Speech service for instance) to the Anki card. Two birds in one stone. I’m not saying everyone should use Anki, or that it should be your main tool. Just that I like using it to keep newly learned words and concepts stick a little better in my head. Steve doesn’t like it, that’s clear, but he does like other tooling to help with learning like LingQ. What is your approach? What works for you?
@@PeterSmitGroningen fair enough and it seems like you found an approach that works well for you. Personally, I don't have the discipline and motivation to do that (that's probably the main reason for me 😅). For my Spanish, I currently don't worry about output too much and just get more input via intermediate podcasts and the occasional graded reader thrown in to keep things fresh. I started two video games in Spanish over the past few weeks, just to test the waters, and I was surprised that I could mostly follow along, but my comprehension is still on the low end and so I put it aside for now.
My English will go into maintenance mode in the next few months so I can ramp up on my Spanish input. I'm at a point, where the curse of diminishing returns leads me to think, that my time would be better invested in another language.
I help kids with their reading fluency in German and it's interesting to see the similarities of struggles that we have to overcome. All in all, I think nothing beats the amount of time we spend in contact with the language, but how we do that and what is enjoyable may differ greatly from person to person.
I agree 100% that time spent with the language is the main driver. The tools are just there to make the process a little more enjoyable or frictionless
Hey Steve! Congrats on the huge milestone. Here is my question:
How many hours a day did you spend when you first learned Chinese and Japanese in order to become fluent and if you could go back, would you do anything differently to be more efficient?
Been using LingQ for a while now for Japanese and I'm really enjoying it!
Bro, I'm studying Japanese 1 hour every day . some days I study 2 hours but it's becomes boring and stressful. I still think that 1 hour is not enough for me😢.I'm learning English too, I'm trying to do my best every day, when I find a video in Japanese on you tube there are a lot of unknown kanji an vocabulary. I started learning in 2022
@@fillipe6732It might help you to accept the fact that there will be a lot you won’t understand for a long time and it’s totally fine. You’re learning it, it’s necessary and natural to not be able to do something for it to be learned. But you can still enjoy content where you don’t understand many things. A lot of communication goes through context, tone and mimic I found, even in anime where you can’t see real faces at all. Be patient, I am sure you’ll do fine 👍
He had spend six hour per day with chinese but because he was pay for that. ( It's in his book )
@@fillipe6732 Do you vary your study methods? Using different resources helps break it up a little.
@flashgordon6510 Yes, I read and listen to a large variety of subjects that I can understand a little bit. Generally, I'm watching TH-cam videos , interviews and online newspapers in both languages:English and Japanese
Makes so much sense. There are no shortcuts. Put in the work.
People sometimes talk about subjects without knowing much about them or without thinking much about them - They just want to show off, show how eloquent they are, Steve Kaufmann however talks about his experiences - His speeches are never empty!
Well thought out. It is the practical suggestions and experience that speaks louder.
I agree with you. There's no way to short cut learning a language. You need to consume it in massive quantity, especially with reading.
And you can't do it all in 6 months. There's just so much your brain can retain at a time. It needs rest. So, realistically, to get good in a language one needs at least 2-3 years. Many become great talkers before that, but acquiring a large vocabulary takes time.
It possible drastically cut learning time if hit with a club every time said wrong)
Sort of, the shortcuts only really apply to the early stages when you don't know anything. You need a few shortcuts to get good enough to where you're not miserably using the language.
When I was living in China learning Mandarin, I had to get from basically zero to some usable level of fluency as quickly as possible. It was a practical thing that I couldn't just spend a bunch of time with my head in books or watching movies. So, I memorized entire sentences for basic things like eating. I'd learn sentence frames and the things that were allowed to go into them and it got me far enough in a matter of a few months that I could largely function.
That being said, that's about as far as you're likely to ever go doing that. Beyond that memorizing phrases and sentences benefits you at most in terms of helping you to follow along with the things you're reading and hearing. You get a bit like that, but not really that much.
@@borissapron6696Ah, the French Foreign Legion method of language learning. Aka "beating the B1 into you."
It can be argued that starting to learn a language at a later time than childhood requires shortcuts
When he speaks about your brain knowing what you're supposed to do but still wanting to revert to your native language! Truth. I definitely experience that. Sometimes I speak a Korean sentence and then I'll stop and just say "wow I just Englished all over that thing!" Yeah, it's technically using Korean words but it said in a very Englishy way.
Ok, 50% of a language is made with 500 words, (a, and, or, etc.) which I find easy. The problem is that native speakers mix in another 50,000 words in between these 500 words. It's the 50,000 words and their forms (cases etc.) that I struggle with.
C Cordialement de Montréal, votre ville d'origine! Didier Cher Steve! Un grand bonjour de Montréal. Je suis vos vidéos depuis longtemps et les trouve toujours passionnantes. J'apprends le japonais de manière intensive depuis 3ans et, cette semaine, je commence un livre scolaire unilingue en japonais pour les élèves du primaire. Comme vous le dites, il faut prendre du plaisir dans l'apprentissage des langues. Cela me plaît énormément de lire en japonais - sans traduction.
I've been using Mnemonics for about half a year, and found them to be extremely useful in learning lists of vocab quickly. At first I did find it difficult to come up with images that worked - some worked well; others didn't - and I did find it time consuming. However, like everything else, the more you practice the easier it gets, and I have got better at thinking up mnemonics that work, and I can do it very quickly - in usually, no more than a few minutes now. If I can't think of anything, I'll leave it and move on - and usually come up with something later.. I'm learning Japanese right now, and I'm pretty sure I would be finding it much more difficult without mnemonics. I still regularly astonish myself, when I find I can recall a set of words which I heard for the first time several hours, or a day before - without any repetition practice. And when I do add repetition to my practice (in combination with the mnemonics), I'm able to commit new pieces of language to long-term memory very quickly. So, in my experience, mnemonics are an extremely valuable tool, and well worth the time invested in developing that skill.
I've also been learning Japanese, and mnemonics have been a tremendous help when learning kanji. Especially for the more complex ones, being able to break them down into parts and create a mental image or story has really helped me recall new characters. I've been using Wanikani, and it's been great for those reasons. It doesn't focus as much on vocab or sentence structure, so LingQ has been helpfully for that.
@@justjordan1300Hi, could you please explain to me how it works? thank you.
@@oswaldocaminos8431Which part? Wanikani?
@@oswaldocaminos8431 If it's for the Kanji, the correct way to do that is to learn the components and what sort of components they are and structure the mnemonics around that. Kanji is pretty annoying compared with learning them as part of Chinese because they have more possible ways of being read. Chinese characters rarely have more than 2 possible ways of being read, and it's usually because the character is the result of multiple characters having been merged at some point.
Outlier linguistics has some pretty good resources for characters whether they're being used in Mandarin or Japanese.
Congratulations Steve! Thank you very much for your videos, they mean a lot to all of us! The questions I wanted to ask are 1. Can you give your opinion on Mandarin Blueprint method? I’m both subscribed to LingQ and them but I’m switching to LingQ more and more as I progress. Their method of learning Chinese is quite different from yours. 2. Do you believe that the quality of language learning drops when you are simultaneously occupied by physical activity? You usually say that you listen to podcasts while running - do you think that you are equally productive when combining running and listening just as when you are listening at your desk? 3. Have you noticed that a short break after a hard studying period increases your level? I was learning Dutch daily for 3 hours for a year, took a test and almost failed. Then after 2 month of no practice it felt like the language was finally digested and I got C1 without almost any prior training. Thank you very much once again! All the best to you and your channel!
I agree with most things Kauffmann said, however Feriss' advice on using mnemonics works wonders. Kauffmann says it takes a lot of time to create these associations, but you can do them in a minute or so. What takes a much longer time is hoping the same word will appear again and again, and if it does, hoping your brain will retain it. Some deliberate effort to learn does pay off.
I gave them a shot but most of the words in my language have similar sounding syllables therefore it took me more time to create associations. Do they work for grammar and corrections?
I think they work for those words that I keep blanking on. But I avoid it for almost all other words.
Congrats on your Gold plaque!🎉
I have to comment on the making the same mistakes week after week with your tutor. I took online Japanese small classes and this website offered several classes taught by a few teachers. Once in a while they would get a new teacher etc. but usually they were regular. I remember one new teacher and I was kind of excited because she was a young and kind of pretty. Well, she taught us a lesson... and explained a few expressions, grammar etc. The lessons aren't designed to review material but for whatever reason we asked the same questions about the same things again and she had to explain the EXACT same things again to us... and I think I was the only one who even noticed that she explained this the week before (And I only noticed AFTER she explained it again). I could tell by the look on her face she might not be the patient type that's able to explain things over and over and over to adults that can't remember much. She was gone shortly after. When you find someone who really can explain something to you over and over even though you're a dumb foreigner that just doesn't get it.. you've found someone special. Patient teachers are the best.
yep,when i begin to learn a new language,sometimes just like,you know,jues like i am a little baby,but a adulted baby, so when someone gald to answer to me the same question over and over again,it to me is very helpful.
Playing fluently piano takes me 10 years. I think language is pretty similar. I don’t say it « must »take. It's an average, depending on how you use it, how you are involved. So could take 5 years for really quick studies. But 5 years it’s not one week 😅.
Even in my own mother tongue I'm not fluent in subjects I don't master such as car mechanics, hydrocarbons or politics 😅. I am fluent in subjects that I enjoy.
I agree 👍
@@Pedro94-dp 🙏
Tim Ferriss is a “hacker” but you can’t hack language learning.
You can't hack a lot of the things he claims to. I was stupid enough to follow 4 hour body when I was younger and it's awful advice.
Congrats on your 1M subs.
Hey, Steve! How are you?
I study 4 languages (English, Spanish, Japanes and korean.)
I"m Brazilian, my language native is portuguese.
My biggest difficulty is remembering specific vocabulary when I need it. I can't express my thoughts properly because I don't remember the words that represent what I want to say... How can I improve?
Greetings from a fellow Brazilian! It's quite hard to find those of us who also like learning languages, but just in this comment section I already found three - excluding myself, of course. Our language sets us in a good spot for learning other ones, structurally and phonetically. It's a shame many Brazilians don't even give themselves a chance to language learning - or just fall in the whole language, mostly English, course scams - e.g. in my school, besides me, only two other students speak English.
Eu podia ter respondido em português, mas segui no inglês só por coêrencia mesmo. Fora que é bem provável que outros que leiam esse comentário não falem Português, enfim
1M subscribers 🎉
Congratulations Steve.
Hi Steve
How do I learn a language with little media and resources?
What language are you trying to learn?
What are your opinions/experiences of language exchange applications that allow regular correspondence with native speakers through messaging and phone/video calls? How much time would you allocate to these exchanges, compared to the usual input methods of reading books and listening to podcasts?
Hello Steve. Congratulations on reaching a million subscribers :)
This is my question:
How should I learn Arabic?
If I understand correctly, you recommend learning languages through reading.
However, this is impossible in Arabic since the written (al-Fusha) and vernacular (al-Amiya) languages are completely different.
Also, I should tell you I am from Israel, so going to an Arab country, especially now, is completely out of the question
The 12 sentence method is good only for those who are absolute beginners and have never studied a 2nd language and don’t have the confidence to speak in that language. That’s what it is at most though.
Reading and listening is the best way to really improve, but once to use a word you have to really understand it to let your brain be confident to prompt you when you speak.
Hello Steve! Congratulations on reaching 1 million subscribers! Your videos and LingQ kind of "restarted" my passion for language learning. My question is: Are there any plans at LingQ to make more courses free? Like Icelandic and Ukrainian. Thank you. Greetings from Belarus.
We have no immediate plans to do that.
One question I have is that when you are listening to the language in the early stages, do you have to pay attention to it? Like if I am cleaning or playing a video game or something and not really paying attention to what I am listening to, does that affect how much I get out of listening? Love your videos, and have a great day!
you will learn almost nothing with that strategy. it needs to be active listening. It's the reason why people can move to a foreign country and live there for years without ever learning the local language. Unless you intentionally try to decipher what you're hearing you won't make progress. Google "is passive listening effective?" for more insight on this topic if you want.
@@sorted7405 Ok, thanks!
Thank you for sharing The 13-sentence method. I don’t see it as the destination, but rather as a helpful jumping off board from which to start learning some of the intricacies of a new language.
Memorized sentences is where I usually start when I've got a new language that I need to be able to manage in. It helps me know that if I pronounce that correctly, I can focus on the response that I'm getting rather than just on what I'm saying.
After that, I'll usually learn a bunch of sentence frames and what's allowed to go into the blanks.
Then, it's just a lot of practice and exposure for the rest of it. The first two bits are definitely shortcuts as there are longer ways of doing it, but I got a ton out of doing it with Mandarin when I was living in China and needing to get things done on my own. I started with effectively zero Mandarin and within a couple months I knew enough to be able to feed myself and get around. I could even travel city to city by bus without too much trouble.
That being said, there's still a ton that I don't know because I haven't really studied long enough, and that's basically just going to be a combination of book learning and exposure to the rules alongside actual exposure to real media and learning whatever grammar and vocab makes that easier.
I very much agree with your points. However, I do think that a little bit of spaced repetition is helpful. In the same way, when we were kids we were taught some words through repetition.
I have been using Linq for a week now, and it's an incredible tool. I'm amazed by the almost limitless possibilities it provides for language learning. My only gripe is that the translations are unreliable and there is no grammar explanation aside from the bare minimum grammar guide that it has. It's okay for more advanced learners, but for beginners and maybe intermediate learners it would be a bit unproductive. One can argue that we learned language as children without beinf taught grammar, but I would argue back that it took very long and there's no reason to emulate babies when we as grown-ups can learn in a more efficient way. I wish Linq had some more complex content that are actually manually translated and contains some necessary grammar points.
Thanks for the videos Steve. I'm born bilingual English and Hungarian in NJ... Then at age 50 you and others got me to go full on into Spanish reading Harry Potter. Never missed a day for 3 years. Now I'm onto french because of you and Olly and others.
can i ask you,when your beginning stage to learn spanish,what did you do for it,i mean,reading Harry potter in a new language is very difficult.because it is not very easy for beginner. i am a native Chinese speaker,i tired to read harry potter in english two months ago,but it is too difficult for me,so many difficult adjective and some difficult words.i fell that reading it in a foreign language is to hard.so i can't consist to read it. can i get some experience about how to improve reading skull of a foreign language from you?
@@陈沉沉-m2vGo slow. Reread chapters as needed. Sound it out and say it.
@@陈沉沉-m2v . Sorry I just saw this. Well English and Spanish were similar enough. And Spanish is easy to pronounce and is spelled very much like it sounds. This is not the case for french. To go from Chinese to English seems like a tough crossover with Harry Potter. For french I'm watching more tv and movies and trying to not have subtitles on at all after I've seen it once. Then I retry reading every couple weeks. Sorry I don't have better answers. But I'd say do anything that you will keep doing every day and you'll get somewhere
@@lazstan Thinks for your reply.I am very appreciate it!Since i've send that comment to you,two months have been pass. Even thought i've said that reading harry potter in english was too difficult for me four months ago.But now i can almost understand the first book of harry potter series.Harry potter and philosophy stone.Due to keeping learning.Not only my reading ability but also my listening and writing and speaking capability have a great breakthrough.According my own experience,I one hundred persent agree with what you have said in the comment applied to me.Keeping do it every day will make you better and better.
Who he? Me friend
Firstly, thank you so much for the amazing advice and help you give us! 😀
Secondly, here's my question:
How do you (as in you personally) decide which language to study next? Could you give us some general guidelines to help us make our own decisions on this as well, please?
How effective has your general approach of "dont spend too much time on grammar and just let the language wash over you" been when studying a language as gramatically complex as Arabic? Congratulations on one million!
I think I recall him answering a similar question about Russian.
Ang mabuting talasalitaan that's what's important.
I think a lot of people don't realize how many skills are needed to be in a conversation. As I learn Italian, I find I can understand the conversations of others as long as I am not taking part in the conversation.
It's a generatonal thing, in my opinion. Nowadays especially because the internet exists and there is so much information available, people tend to think learning in the traditional sense is no longer necessary and to know something comes easy, this isn't the case. Learning a foreign language is just a proof of that misunderstanding, to comprehend and be able to use a language demands concentration, motivation and a lot of practice, there is no short cut....
I would like to know (maybe if you have a statistic or just from experience) how much harder is it to learn your first foreign language than the second?
Like to add to this, languages of the same tree, like Spanish after learning french?
@@seanmaher8320 perfect addition to the question, thank you. I hope we get more likes ❤️
That's a great question, since i've been in language learning for quite a while, and still am fluent in only two (getting there with German though). Although what often makes me wonder about that, is that I've learned English from just exposure online in about two years, with minimal effort and no actual goal of "learning English" - it was more of a "understanding what all these folks are talking about"
@@quostad wow! i am at 2 years of Portuguese and nowhere near fluent.
@@gamingwithpurg3anarchy157 My native language is Portuguese. It's nice to see somebody taking such effort and time into learning our language, I really appreciate it!
You wouldn't invest a lot of time into mnemonics. You'd select a smaller number of important words that aren't sticking, and use mnemonics on those. You'd also use it for things like learning Chinese Characters as it's faster to decompose the characters into their components and memorize their placement and combination with mnemonics than other methods.
When I do it, I quickly generate the mnemonic, and I don't even bother to memorize that. I'm just trying to generate what Harry Lorrayne referred to as "original awareness" of the word. If I do that with the words that I really need, or want to know, over time that will speed things up a bit and make the process of using, and enjoying, the language a lot more pleasant.
But, I do completely agree, that there's little point in forced memorization in this method, at best that gives you a hook to hold the other meanings and you're looking at potentially 10-20k words to be fluent.
That makes sense. I struggled with l’argile, meaning the clay in French. So I remembered this: Ahhh Gilles, you have a clay soil. It worked.
Tim Ferris is referencing Michel Thomas's method of word association. I remember listening to Thomas, talking about the word ARROZ in spanish suggesting we imagine lots of arrows, but the word ARROZ is really the same as the word RICE. Same with SUGAR AZUCAR SUCRE ZUCHHERO, if you know one, understanding the others (atleast in related languages) should not be rocket science. Not saying that it is always the case especially the further away we get from our native language.
There is only one way in which language enters our speech cortex, it is the same for the first, second or eleventh language, there are no hacks, you can only speed it up by participating more in the language. We should understand that the meaning of a word or a phrase comes not from translation but our brain forms or applies meaning to said expression over time with experience. If it did not, we would have to look up every word in a dictionary or have every word explained to us and that didn't happen in our first language and won't happen in a second etc.
Mr.Kauffman may you be blessed for eternity.
Even when pronunciation's not your primary goal back in the day you did work on your pronunciation in French and Chinese.. what kind of training did you do or which activities did you engage in back in the day, besides massive input?
Personally, I recommend minimal pairs and working to identify which one it is until you can hear the difference. (A minimal pair is just a pair of words that are only separated by a sound. For example, that and fat, they only differ in that initial th versus f) Once you hear the difference, then you should be able to focus on making the correct sound and identifying it as you speak.
And yes, that works with tones, it's just that the tones are another layer. You'd learn the 4 tones of Mandarin, then you'd learn the pairs of tones, then you'd work to replicate entire sentences in the language to get a more natural tone sandhi. It didn't take me that long to get that down to the point where I could get myself in trouble because the folks I was talking to thought I knew far more Mandarin than I needed. (Having the language on in the background at all times will help that as well, this is an exception to the rule about not being able to learn by mindless exposure)
Wrong. You keep forgetting an important fact. As a retired person who has nothing better to do than just sit at home and keep yourself busy with this hobby - learning for the sake of learning.
But for most people its not the case:they have very little free time AND they have a specific purpose to learn a language - to travel or work or relocate. Speaking like a native is a very rare objective, although always a desirable one. Most ppl dont learn to be conversationaly fluent. They learn to resolve specific problems. Thats why your approach - learn everything, every moment of your life to become perfect in everything doesnt work for them. They DO need shortcuts. And guess what - even an impetfect conversation gets them to resolve those problems - be it participating in a business confi-call, or ordering a taxi. And the shortcuts DO work. Those 12 sentences is a fab idea. The high frequency words is a fab idea. Marvelous. They will not get you read Shakspire. Neither will you speak like one. but you will certainly resolve most issues around you and go home happy. Which is the original reason why you started learning a new language.
For me it's a little bit of a catch 22 with language learning. Until you can read and understand content that you're interested in (even while looking up words like on LingQ), immersing is just painful and in fact it feels like you're just doing flash cards even. So it seems like why not just do flash cards where you know for sure they'll repeat consistently and you'll at least get things right albeit either out of context or just repeating the same context (sentence and or picture) over and over. Sure it would be better to immerse in interesting content but until you're a strong B1 or B2 that's just not possible at least not in a meaningful way. You can plow through it anyway hoping for the best. Which I do.
One reason I think people like conversations is that they're like graded readers in a way because the person you're talking to is going to try to grade their speaking level to accommodate your lower level. Sure, if they have to grade their language too much it's not a fluent conversation really but for a lot of people it's better than reading a book. A lot more meaningful. If you can find people to talk to anyway.
how similar do you think instruments and language are?
Sorry I already posted this comment but im putting it here for the Q&A
A good rule of thumb: if you're the type of person who's looking for a shortcut, an easy way, a trick, a quick fix, etc., then don't bother with languages. Languages, like so many worthwhile things, take both effort and time. Finding efficiencies is one thing, but so many language channels and apps prey on insecure, gullible learners, making them think that if they only do this or buy that, they'll suddenly gain the magical language shortcut that far smarter people haven't been able to come up with for millennia. A lot of speakers never become highly skilled with their mother tongue, despite many years of exposure and schooling, so don't expect a magic pill for a foreign language, even for a rudimentary level of conversational fluency, let alone actual eloquence, correctness, and precision in speech and writing.
Congratulations on the well-deserved subscriber count! You've been such a source of encouragement on my Japanese language journey. I wish you continued success!
Very good!
What chat apps do you recommend? Omegle is dead, F
Vaca is cow or vache or mucca oder kuh, and that's it. That's the kind word you learn very fast but if his example were, say, convencer, then it's convince, convaincre and convincere (I guess) and no idea in German, which I barely reached A1. Yes, you could learn only 500 words, only the me and you conjugations, and a set of 100 phrases and force fluent speakers to speak your simplified lingo so that you can understand, but that doesn't make you a polyglot. It could be a first step, it could be a good hack for a trip you decided to take to Serbia in 2 weeks, but something like that should never be the end goal of any language living person. "I finished learning my 500 words in this Greek. I'm done with it. Next language Herr I come." That would make some sense to me, if you know 3 or 4 languages well, and doesn't want to commit to any new language but still wants to know a bit about other languages, their alphabets, how their grammar works, their vocab similarities to the languages you know, etc... Something that would interest more the linguist type. Still, nothing is lost when it comes to language learning, but that approach is definitely not my cup of tea.
Language loving person.
No offense meant, but his vacuum mnemonic would just ingrain bad pronounciation habits since the Spanish V sounds identical to a B.
Hola Steve, llevo meses utilizando la aplicación de LingQ y me ha gustado, no se a veces pienso que estoy estudiando mal y por eso no avanzo, podrías hacer un vídeo en como tú estudias en LingQ, como por ejemplo en qué momento pasas a otra lección o cuántas veces repites la lección y cosas así, me ayudaría muchísimo
A mi también me parece una buena idea que haga un video sobre eso! Me encantaría ver sus métodos.
Yo soy bastante novatillo con Lingq, pero por ahora me está yendo bien.
Como utilizas Lingq? Por que crees exactamente que no estás avanzando?
Espero que pronto sientas que estás teniendo éxito con tus estudios! Ánimo!
@@BERRUEZA más que todo por el tema de avanzar de nivel, me tomo como 4 meses para avanzar a principiantes 2 y eso que le dedicó de 2 a 4 horas al estudio, entonces no sé si es que estoy repitiendo mucho los capítulos o le dedicó mucho tiempo a un capítulo que no conozco. (estoy estudiando inglés)
@@deivid7200 Le dedicas de 2 a 4 horas todos los días? De ese tiempo, cuanto lo pasas en Lingq? Cuando empecé a usar Lingq, me vi varios videos en TH-cam sobre como utilizar/estudiar en Lingq de una manera eficiente, y aunque los videos que me vi eran en Inglés, seguro que puedes encontrar videos similares en Español. Te lo recomiendo! Podrán explicarte a fondo como usarlo mejor de lo que te podría yo explicarte aquí por escrito.
Quizá lo que te está produciendo supuesto atasco, o el parecer que no avanzas, es tan simple como que no estás exponiéndote a contenido mas complicado o avanzado, es decir, mas complicado o avanzado para ti. Uno se puede quedar atascado sin avanzar por el hecho de que piensa que tiene que entender todo al 100%, antes de seguir adelante. Esto es incorrecto, o al menos innecesario.
No conozco la lección que mencionas "principiantes 2", pero te sugiero probar ir al siguiente nivel, a ver como te va. Luego vuelve al principiantes 2 a ver si lo entiendes algo mejor. Hay que darle tiempo al cerebro que procese toda la información nueva que le estás dando. Y por su puesto combinar el estudio con un montón de "input", mucho mas que el propio estudio, ésta parte es suuuper importante! Mírate videos de TH-cam en Inglés, contenido más o menos a tu nivel, o alguna serie en Inglés. Eso te ayudará tremendamente.
Lo último que diré es que 4 meses no es "demasiado" tiempo. No te preocupes de eso. Tu ve a tu paso, y que los demás vayan al suyo. Cuanto más tiempo le dediques, más entenderás; y recuerda que 1 hora al día consistentemente, tras varios mese, es mucho más efectivo que 2 a 4 horas unos cuantos días. La consistencia todos los días es la clave.
@@BERRUEZA de las 2 o 4 horas que estudiaba todo el tiempo era en LingQ, igualmente todo los días, yo creo que es lo que tú dices que le hasta que no sepa las cosas al 100% no paso a la siguiente, de igual manera, solo estoy estudiando una hora y pues tratando de no repetir tanto y consumir cosas nuevas
It's so cool to see the progress you've made over the years with this channel and your app project. I love the refreshing takes you've done lately, where you challenge ideas.
My question is: Do you have any favorite books in Mandarin Chinese, any subject.
I agree that people who chase shortcuts more often than not have bought into a delusion; something along the lines of obtaining a baby in a month with 9 women involved in the project. But when it comes to naturally occurring scenarios in which to experience and then acquire the new language, we've got to put thought into how to set that up. If we're living in a country where the desired language is spoken, and we're unavoidably surrounded by speakers of that language, then natural situations for acquiring this language are what our daily life consists of. But if we're trying to learn a language without being surrounded by speakers of that language in 'real life' (whatever that is), then we have to find another way of experiencing everyday life in that language. Reading is always beneficial, in my experience at least. But to be able to first understand and then speak the language, I find that TV serials, especially detectives, are particularly helpful. Sure, that doesn't help you if you need to learn the language of a small African tribe, but in that case you probably know that going and staying there for a while is probably your only choice. I just want to emphasise that to speak well, we have to understand what others are saying first. And for that, we need regular exposure to speech in that language, at more or less average speed, in fairly large almost-daily quantities, and in a wide variety of situations that come up in life.
Question and LingQ request: I’m currently learning Thai (requesting to pls bring Thai to LingQ in the future!) primarily through the TH-cam channel “Comprehensible Thai”. The channel emphasizes to just watch and listen and try to acquire the language through comprehensible input from the videos. It’s been helpful so far, but the channel also advises against reading in the beginner stages because they say toddlers first learn to comprehend the language, then they’ll start to speak/output naturally eventually. Only after some certain level comprehension is when they can start to learn how to read (and write). They emphasize a lot of listening first instead of reading since listening will help your ears get used to the sounds of the language.
What do you think about this? Do you think reading should only be started after some level of familiarity with the language?
I do support that Thai should be added to LingQ! 😊 Same second question, different wording : does it make sense that we as adults use the same way of learning as toddlers?
Tim Ferris has built an entire career saying hacky things that sound great in theory but that have no actual bearing on reality. Literally nothing he says is helpful.. It's genuinely quite amazing that he's got away with this at this scale
This golden prize not only makes you happy but we also happy with you. Love you for your daily class.
Wow, the mnemonics.. now way this can work for a large vocabulary. I'm sure it'll work well for up to a few hundred words, based from my own experience with Kanji. More than that, it's simply impractical.
The way to learn vocabulary is, in a way, indeed based on images, or to be more correct, associations and the brain's "image" (which doesn't have to be an "image" as such). That will cement the meaning, and in my opinion in a much better way than what mnemonics will. (In other words - I'm not a fan of translations as a way to learn words, although sometimes using translations can't be helped. But starting with translations and then using mnemonics.. that's just not a good method, in my opinion)
Congrats on 1M!
Question: Do you think there is any correlation between speaking early as a baby and learning a second language as an adult more quickly?
Congrats on the gold TH-cam plaque. !!
My questions for the Q&A:
-How many hours of Comprehensible Input should you have before you start speaking (ie output)
-What is your opinion on watching material in your target language (eg spanish) with subtitles on in the target language (eg spanish)
Thanks for sharing
I love watching videos on TH-cam in the language I'm learning and leaving a comment even if the only thing I'm able to say is "nice video, I agree with you". Understanding a language and using it well are two distinct abilities. It's like memorizing recipes and actually cooking something. I'm always trying to have conversations with myself since I usually don't have anybody to practice it, and it's a great way to find the gaps in my knowledge.
I'm at roughly 8,000-10,000 words in Portuguese and still struggle to have basic conversations.. it's just so darn hard increasing my comprehension abilities. Even with words I know often I don't understand what's being said. With a few hundred hours of listening practice. Not all active.. much is passive listening. But definitely over 130 hours is active.
How have you learned so many words but have so little listening time? Did you just use anki? I'm probably at 4-5k words and have 750 hours of listening and reading. Don't really have a problem understanding people now
@@seanmaher8320 I've never used anki no. I don't know my exact listening time. i did say Hundreds of hours.. I only discovered LingQ a year and a half into my 2 years of learning (2 years and 2 months now). On LingQ I have somewhere in the 130 hour range. i don't remember.. but I've watched a lot of yt, listened to a lot of music, podcasts and also watched a couple shows. So it's probably at 300+ hours easily. But it's still super difficult to understand. Getting easier.. but still. (When I watched the shows and listened to most of the podcasts I still had little vocabulary. Recently I've been understanding more and more quickly though. My problem is that I haven't had much talking/phone call time.. the 3 times I've talked my comprehension increased a lot. But I never really have opportunities so 🤷🏻
Sometimes even i, a native portuguese speaker, can't understand what portuguese speaking people are trying to say, specially the northern accent
Hi there Steve! Congrats on the million subscribers milestone :)
I have a question for you regarding learning Chinese characters.
What would you recommend for the average learner who has around an hour a day for study? At what point should one transition from pinyin to learning characters? Essentially, how much should one already know/understand (comprehension) before committing to learning characters? And what is a good method for learning them / what is a good goal to strive for during the first few months of studying characters?
I apologize for the long-winded explanation to my question 😅
Thank you!
Borja
Thank you very much for your content. Without a doubt, immersing yourself in the language is one of the best ways to learn it faster.
I really wish I was obsessed with reading. I can only read 10-20 pages a day of a book a day especially a book in my own native language. I feel like massive reading is the big secret to mastering a foreign language.
Read online including comments by advanced users of that language. Reading can be done in little chunks .
What is a way to make language learning less stressful when you are doing it on your own?
Sir do you have video on Phonemes pronunciation?
Tim Ferris is the physical embodiment of midwittery.
Do you have book recommendations for learners wanting to start to read? Specifically in German or Japanese
Congratulations Steve! Great, well deseved achievement! It's always nice to see people appreciating good and meaningful content on YT.
My question for Q&A: my level of spanish is very close to reach C2. I've challenged myself to write a book in that language. Do you think it's a good way of practice and improve or it's a waste of time? Maybe is better to stick to diffrent ways of learning which are less time-consuming?
Thank you and greetings from Poland! Dziękuję i jeszcze raz gratuluje! :)
Congratulations on 1 Million! What would you say is the best method for learning romance languages? I'm looking at Brazilian Portuguese in particular but I want to learn the European dialect of Portuguese, Spanish and French afterwards.
Question: I just reached your channel, what are some good videos to start with?
English is my second language and I think I'm pretty good at it
I would like to know what the differences extensive reading vs intensive reading, and which is better and why.
Hello Steve. I have few question, do you plan to visit the muslim countries, Iran and Turkey one day? Or country in ex URSS where russian is still speak? I now you read a lot of classical french book like balzac but are you able to read the classic of the other languages? Like Dostoievski in russian or Goethe in german? Because i have the impress that there is an another world of word in it, i'm currently reading confortably bestseller in english but when i want to read the classic like Steinbeck or Conrad i keep struggling a lot with the vocabulary and i'm wondering if it's happen to you too. Another question, it is good to learn many language to reach the intermediate plateau and maintain them for entering after in complete immersion when i will visit the country? Have a good day
Who’s doing these graphics? I lost it at 2:22 😂
By the way, greetings from the Czech Republic, I am from Olomouc , a city very near to Prostějov
Can the punjabi language come to lingq ?
Congratulations, Steve! Well-deserved for the interesting and helpful content.
My question would be:
What is the best way to teach English as a second language in a classroom setting? I will be volunteering as an English teacher in rural Cambodia and want to be effective. Would it be to focus on providing comprehensible input? What is the best way to use classroom time for beginners/mid-level English learners? How would you do it?
What's your IQ ?
I think you are blessed since born , have special talent that's why you are able to learn languages so easily while other ppl feel difficulty in even learning 1 language
Jews has been forced to learn unrelated languages in the past 2000 years of exile . Humans carry their ancestral genetic imprint so maybe you are right that he was indeed born with some linguistic talent. I had 2 Israeli schoolmate in Istanbul language school who've passed C2 level Turkish language exam after 5 month of study. I myself found some languages just downloaded itslef to my brain without me putting much effort (yakutsk/Tatar/ Turkish/ Persian/ Chinese/ Japanese/navajo ) while English/ Russian/ Arabic took me quite long to become fluent.
@@gee8883 Can you give some advices to me how to learn Turkish in 5 months ? & what you do to learn words' meaning?
There seems to be lots of videos on TH-cam promising fluency in a few weeks, a few days, a few seconds...
And actually they are not wrong!!
But they are all talking about baby language, a very simple language, with very simple grammar and vocabulary, used by children.
You can use baby language to say whatever you want, and most native speakers will probably understand you.
And as long as native speakers also use baby language with you, you will be able to understand them.
The problem is that most native speakers don't want to use baby language, don't want to talk to you as if you were a retard or a small child.
And also, what is the point of learning a language in the first place? How can I call myself fluent if I am unable to understand normal native media like books, newspapers, films, TV or music?
My goal when learning a language is to be able to understand native media so I can get a deep dive into the foreign culture.
Baby language is not my goal. And most of these TH-cam videos are talking about baby language.
Congrats for the milestone Steve!
My question would be, we know very well how you do your input, but how does the output session looks like?
it would be awesome if you can explain in detail.
Congratulations on 1 Mil Steve!
For my question: I often find myself keeping listening and reading separate. Aside from watching shows or TH-cam with subtitles, when I read say a book I do it separate from say an audio book, and when I'm listening whilst doing other tasks it's often to a podcast I've never listened to before. I've done this from the very beginning and while listening my comprehension can be pretty low as I've never studied the content say on LingQ or some other resource.
I don't really enjoy reading transcripts from podcasts or videos, and often times I can't find audiobooks for what I'm reading. Is this still a viable strategy for improving my listening abilities in the language?
I should mention that my listening is improving ever so slightly, but still pales in comparision to my reading.
Do you find it harder to learn languages now that you are a senior? How has your memory been affected, now that you are older?
I am a native Spanish speaker. Anyone who wants to exchange language with English and Spanish?
Yo Laura, try the website conversation exchange, very easy way to find language partners
@@seanmaher8320Excellent idea, I'm going to try it!! ❤
2:06 ChatGPT says that an average educated English speaker adult manage in between 20/35 thousand words 🤔
Curious data to take into account!
any tips for learning persian-arabic script and read it quite fluently?
Thanks 🤩 dear
We know that you are right that’s very true,
In three months we can learn some vocabulary, but never a language.
So thanks 🙏
Dear Steve. Good morning. I can understand the listening when people talk ( near English 70 %) but now for me it is very difficult to talk fluently and express my ideas about work for example. I feel that I need more and more vocabulary in orden to talk fluenty. Please what do You recommend?. Thank so much. God bless You.
There's some good points in this video but the whole thing is underpinned by this exceptionally high bar for "fluency".
40,000-50,000 words isn't "conversationally fluent", it's native level, a highly academic native at that. Your average person understands about 30,000 words in their native language and thinks to use maybe a quarter of them.
If a learner needs to comprehend tens of thousands of words before they are fluent (natural) in everyday conversation they've spent way too long with a nose in a textbook
Tengo una pregunta: En qué países de Latinoamérica tú estuviste? Como sabrás el español tiene muchos acentos y dialectos, con cuál acento tu entiendes bien el Español?
With ADHD its like having a constantly talking voice in your head. When I learned Tagalog I had two man that was tough it was like being two people. Oddly on laguage 3 Portuguese it stopped thank God. Now there is just ohe voice yhe language I am in at that time.
There's nothing wrong with starting with an extremely limited knowledge and vocabulary of a language. It's how we all learn to speak our native tongues. Lots of native speakers of English for example have never read a novel or anything like a college level textbook. Plus they will make routine and repetitive errors in grammar. There's also the example of limited English for air traffic control which is very successful in communicating.
Fluency, language, words, memorization techniques, patterns, techniques...and on...one question of myself trying to learn, would be how much time shall i spend on leaning the theories and techniques? Are these things, prerequisites before i develop my plan to learn a language? Now, it seems some progress is made by incorporating many theories...i think there are a bunch of ghostlighters out there, for senseless reasons. I am amazed, a person can speak fluently in 10 or more languages.. My birth language is American English. I am trying to learn a new language at an age when many say that it is perhaps not possible. Then as i recall Webster's collegiate dictionary from the late 70's. The book form, boasted over 50,000 English words. Thinking back on thus fact, and basing an idea, of learning or knowing 10's of thousands of words to be fluent is not a reality for the conversational masses!? I honestly believe that perhaps i know some of the 50,000 words mentioned, perhaps 25,000? I think i speak quite fluently. And, just another point, ...Standford U., came out several years ago, producing a study, suggesting the average American, using conversational words, avoiding technical jargon, used hardly more than 500 words in a daily routine, speaking the language! What does this indicate regarding knowing, and sensibly using a language???
I am most interested in the creative uses of Korean. Fiction. Poetry. Even song lyrics. With poetry or song lyrics, for instance, there are so many metaphors and similes, rhyme schemes and cultural context that it's quite an undertaking to even get one song completely "understood." But as a language that uses a different alphabet, it has a different beginner stage than the majority of other languages. Learning Hangul.
This is how it started: So I'm watching a KPop song on TH-cam with English subtitles. I am sure the translations are wonky, based on everything I know about songwriting. They aren't literal but they aren't lyrics either, they drop both meter and rhyme scheme. I quickly get that translating between Korean and English is weird. I start learning Hangul. But I don't get this "learn Hangul in 20 minutes" stuff. It's taking it own time. Then I come across a short wherein two people have a conversation in English with a literal translation from Japanese. I think of Yoda with his "Happy I am" language. NOW I get it. It's the order of noun, verb, adjective that is most different. How, then, do I approach the task of learning Korean more accurately, if that makes sense?
I watch, listen to a video. Or look at a text. I'll go through the video to copy the Hangul, then literally translate it, including the order of noun, verb, adjective as it appears. Only then will I I understand that "xxxxxxx" means "I read Korean fluently" instead of an approximation of that idea, Context is so very important as well, so one sentence won't do. As for romanization, I sometimes use it as a shortcut when learning songs to sing but get rid of it as soon as possible. Yes, you have to slow the videos down to .25 speed sometimes. I feel that until I am fluent with reading and writing Hangul on a very simple level, the majority of time spent looking for patterns and repetitions,, grammar or some kind of "system" of learning would be wasted on me. I also don't think I want to pay for a tutor until I have Hangul better in hand,
My learning is not pressured because I enjoy every part of it, I spend hours a day listening to Korean on TH-cam shows or KDramas. Every time another word or phrase either pops out as it's spoken or catches my interest, usually because I've heard it before and then I look it up. As I learn more I find myself speaking the parts that I understand out loud immediately after I hear them. More and more words are popping out all the time. But it's the opposite of speed reading. I admit I am a speed reader and have a huge vocabulary in English. I am also an artist so writing Hangul can be pleasant to me.
My questions(FINALLY!!!) is can an individual succeed in learning a language like Korean by building their own method? Am I creating unnecessary frustration by not following tried and true methods? When and what would you advice to add on from learning language resources to help facilitate my growth? And I agree, reading and listening (and writing, for me) are fundamental. Rules come later. Thank you for all you do.
40.000 to 50.000 words? I wish fluent speakers, in any language, knew so many words, but I think this is an overestimation. Take Donald Trump. Is he fluent in English? Sure. Does he know 40.000 words? I doubt it.
I very agree with you. I've done so many techniques as you've had mentions in this videos. If you ask is it help? I can say "yes it is!", but you must put a lot of your energy and time especially to Anki and it is very very much unproductive. Just remember how to learn a language just acquire as Steve said. Take a lot of listening and reading just like that. I've been listening and reading for 3 months. I've improved more than using Anki and others mentioned techniques for 2 years. For real. I've had wasting so much time, but at least I got an experienced for doing a mistake and trial and errors.
The place where I've found SRS most useful is for remembering how to write Chinese characters. What was you strategy for tackling that challenge with your Japanese/Mandarin/Cantonese study? Was just reading at volume really enough for you to be able to remember how to write characters?
I love your channel, Im working on arabic for work and I think its healthy to learn new language. What do you call someone that speaks 2 languages......bilingual. what do you call someone that speaks 1 language........american 😔. Im american and I think this should change. Also what level of proficiency does a person need to speak to get a job a12 b12 c12?
There is a shortcut. If you use passive learning (reading, listening) it will take you a lot of time and it's a lazy way. Try some active encoding with a lot of context, avoid passive rehearsal, don't overload your short term memory and after a month you will never go back to reading and listening as a priority.
For your gold plaque video:
I am learning Korean (Basic 2) but the other students seem to be better at understanding the spoken word. It's a little bit demoralising. For example, the teacher might say something and the whole class laughs except me because I didn't get it. ( I am in an immersion class). Any suggestions so I can leapfrog ahead?
My Question: I've buddies up with a native speaker in Portugal online to learn Portuguese. Her English is fluent. My Portuguese is infantile. How could we structure our 1 hour sessions a few times a week so that we both benefit?
At this stage we are both spending the time speaking 99% English.
Thank you
Dear Steve,
I am learn Deutsch A2 at moment however I can understand much more than speak 🗣️.
Can you please give some tips how I improve my 🗣️?
I have a online tutor now but I would like Focus on Conversations.
Big thanks 😊
What is the conversation about? I've been studying Mandarin for a while, and my fluency depends on the topic. Some topics I can talk about freely, others can be humbling.
For example, I was talking about life in my home country, and we went on a tangent, and the person started asking me about taxes. And I didn't have the words to describe things as I would have liked to
Language is not math or any other kind of general knowledge. From my experience, each language requires its own compartment in the brain, where things are tightly interweaved. When I try to speak in a language, which I understand on a level of tv or newspaper, I'm pretty sure, the vocabulary is there, but I experience words popping up in my mind from different non-native languages, and never from my mother's language. Seem like brain makes a decision early enough that it is a word from one of the new compartments and pulls words from the most reachable container of a similar color..