THIS is the Best Book on Language Learning I've Ever Read: HERE'S WHAT IT SAYS
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- Here are some tricks for making rapid progress in learning one, two or three languages at the same time. The information I'm sharing is from The Loom of Language by Frederic Bodmer written in 1941. It's the best book I've ever read on learning a language and change the way I studied.
The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages by Frederic Bodmer edited by Lancelot Hogben
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Never thought I’d have Julius Caesar himself teaching me so much about language.
hahahaha
Wtf XD
Hahahaha that's such a privilege
Put on a Toga and say "pizza, pizza."
😁😁
As an English speaker who achieved very high proficiency in Chinese I feel the key to learning a language that is very different than your own is starting to immediately associate the new word with its image in your mind and the real world instead of with the English word. So when learning a word like apple to imagine over and over that the thing has 2 names now “ping guo” and “apple” instead of trying to memorize that apple =ping guo
Interesting perspective. I will definitely give it a try.
This is how I learned English. Just like you said, when learning a new word like "apple", I imagine the actual fruit, not the word in my native language. A word like "walk" I imagine myself "walking", the only problem I have found with this method is that when I learn new word, sometimes I don't bother to look up the meaning in my native language,so I end up only knowing the meaning on English.
@@miltonorellana4557 yes… I found that I spoke fluently very fast but took a lot of Mental power to act as a translator
@@StardustMonkey yes, it does take a lot of effort to translate.
That's a great tip bro thanks
For all GERMANS: The german translation of this book is called "Die Sprachen der Welt". It's very well known in Germany also and still in print.
Fun fact: The translator removed the chapter about German language and added some chapters about English instead, plus an extra list of German words with latin origin.
Fun fact 2: Frederick Bodmer (with a "k" at the end of the first name) is originally from Swizerland, hence his mother tongue was German.
Omg danke vielmals! habe als ich das erste Mal das Video gsucht hab, des Buch in Englisch gsucht! LG aus Wien
My rough summary: Learn particles first (about 180 words (conjunctions and prepositions). How learning several related languages comparatively (Romance or Germanic (or even Hellenistic (Greek, Pontian, etc) may be more effective, especially for reading them (particularly for English-speaking learners). As well as recommending a classic 1944 book on language learning tactics, in the comments Mikhail Petrunin's "Comparative Grammar of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French: Learn and Compare 4 Languages simultaneously" comes highly recommended! Absolutely brilliant video. No excuses for the English-speaking world not to become polyglots (at least as far as reading is concerned).
Recommended book: "The Loom of Language Learning" by Frederick Bodmeer, edited by Lancelot Hogmeral (1944).
I've tried this method and it's far too abstract for my brain. Maybe it works for some people. I can only learn particles if they are close to 1:1 with an English one or once I know enough other vocab and grammar to be able to put them to use in sentences.
@@andrewdunbar828 One size never fits all! We're all wonderfully different!
Amazing point
Isn't pontian just a Greek dialect?
Sorry, I don't buy the "English native speaker have an advantage" narrative. All the evidence and the reality point to the contrary. Yes, English vocabulary rests on both romance and germanic languages so it means you don't start from zero in either of them, for that one aspect. But there's much more than that to learning a language. Verb conjugation in romance languages is a massive challenge for an English native. It's like going from 1 to 3 dimensions. Nouns and adjectives also need to be matched for gender and number, with a number of specificities, whereas English mostly just adds an -S for plural.
For anything other than phonetics and correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, English is such an uncomplicated and convenient language that most other languages you look at will be harder to learn for an English native than for a native of other language.
This man looks straight out of a 16th century French Painting
@Vindexproeliator uP
My thoughts exactly, I even thought the thumbnail was not a real person😹
lol
He looks like a playing card soldier from alice in wonderland
True, really
I spent 5 years in a spanish speaking country unable to speak the language well if at all. When Michel Thomas explained the similiarities between English and Spanish the penny dropped :o
As a language teacher I think it's important to understand that we don't learn languages, we acquire them. The next time you're singing along to your favourite pop song, ask yourself if you sat down and studied the lyrics so that you could sing along or if you just picked them up. Language starts with the brain decoding sounds it's heard a multitude of times. Meaning comes later. And if you don't trust that approach ask yourself this. How many words do you know in your native tongue? Did you look up the meaning of all of them in a dictionary? I bet you barely checked 1% of them yet you have no doubt about the meaning of most of them. Trust your brain. Participate in the language by listening and reading. You just need relevant context such as something you are interested in. The rest comes effortlessly with time.
Hi, you seem to be saying slightly contradictory things here and thought I should point it out for you to clarify.
If you spent five years surrounded by Spanish, yet didn’t master the language, it seems to contradict the notion of learning by simple exposure without overt study.
Michel Thomas disagrees rather vehemently with both traditional study (rote memorization and grammar) as well as with mere communicative strategies (Krashen). Thomas also claims to ‘give a functional use of a language in a matter of hours’, which is not generally claimed by other methods. What was the effect of Thomas’s method on yourself? How did you change your methods and what was your progress like afterwards?
@@coffeemachtspass
1. You have no idea why I was not able to take advantage of being surrounded by native speakers, but Krashen does. I agree with Krashen.
2. Michel gave me the concept that there is an immense overlap between spanish and english that I was ignorant of. I never said he told me to learn in a traditional manner. But when he made me aware that arroz was rice and azucar sugar I started to make connections that helped.
Ultimately what helped me was simply having a necessity to communicate so I went out to find the language I needed. What hindered me was having native speakers who had no idea how to modify the way they spoke so that I could understand and ultimately that is what makes a good teacher.
The onus of the communication is on the communicator, not the reciever.
Alternatively as a language acquirer you need to know how to reduce what you hear into packets or chunks so that your brain can begin to make sense of them.
If you want to know how languages are learnt go find a two year old and watch listen learn. They will be your best guide.
@@coffeemachtspass
Although I was in a a spanish speaking country I was surrounded by English which prevented/reduced the need to communicate in spanish. I blame my wife.
Absolutely true. I always put every effort in my lessons to make my students go through that acquisition process, because it s the efficient way to do it AND so enjoyable, too .
Brilliant comment mate!
As a person who has studied linguistics and fascinated by language,,,I can actually honestly say that this is how I picked up Koine Greek (biblical Greek) fast, by not over stressing endless verb conjugations (but yes the main 3 or 4 such as present, future, past or participles) and letting the article, pronouns and articles fill in the gaps. That way you get to enjoy reading so much faster, then later you can go deeper and fill in the gaps....honestly so much more satisfying than the way I tried to learn Japanese...and after 10 years, still sucked (I started learning before we had easy access to the internet). This video is a rare example of actual useful advice!!
“Do you speak the bastard tongue?” lol I’m soo stealing that one.
I highly recommend "Comparative Grammar of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French: Learn & Compare 4 Languages Simultaneously" by Mikhail Petrunin.
I found your comment in the right time. As I read your comment I went to google it and I just bought it haha thank you so much. I'm pretty excited and eager to read it.
I NEED this! Thank you very very much!
Thanks Aliesha! Were you learning any of those languages before finding the book? I'd love to know how it actually helped you in the process...
@@andrehinonmyway1809 Hi Andrea! I am a native English speaker from the USA. I have lived in Sweden and studied Swedish for 8 years. I found this book while looking for a resource for learning Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian simultaneously. I studied one year of Spanish and four years of French in high school. I am using this book to brush up on French, learn more Spanish, and learn Portuguese from scratch. I love the Romance languages and am driven to learn them to transcribe and translate genealogical records and also travel to my ancestral lands. This book is a great resource. I think it is great whether you are a beginner or have a preexisting understanding of one or more of these languages. This book really feels like a labor of love. The author provides many charts and tables and intersperses cool tidbits throughout. It is comprehensive but broken down into digestible bits. I studied the Introduction (Alphabet), and then Chapters 10 (Interjections), 7 (Numbers, Time and Dates), and 3 (Adverbs), and am now reading the remaining chapters (1 & 2, 4-6, 8 & 9) sequentially. I am currently on Chapter 5, and taking it slowly. So, the process is ongoing, and I'm sure I will return to this book time and again for reference after I've completed it.
@@alieshamay Thank you so much again. I'm a native Spanish speaker, currently studying French and this video plus your recommendation make me realize I can take full advantage of the process with this resources, so I'll give it a try ☺️ Muchas gracias y éxitos con tu proceso en español 👍
The squareness of your shoulders is unparalleled.
Ooh, "unparalleled", I see what you did there.
Perpendicularised.
Now to check if that's a real word.
@@stumbling Is it?
I'd say they're about 5° off parallel
:D
Now i can't unsee it.
I own a copy of this book, and the thing is just about to fall apart. It really is a fantastic book. The idea is to learn just enough of general linguistics to not be scared of a language.
I saw the video and pulled it off my shelf, and am going to try it again, but for some reason I can't get the approach to stick. I would absolutely love it if somehow this approach could be broken out into lesson plans, because at some point, I just can't seem to brain it and retain it.
Scan it and release pdf onto the internet. A favour to the world.
@@Smegead ^ agree
@@Smegead i got a pdf, not sure if its the exact one though
@@sujoynath1743 please put a link op here..
This is the language learning equivalent of getting your eyes tested and finally being able to see everything clearly. Simply brilliant. Thank you!!
All you need to do is learn Latin. But the Labour Party doesn't want to let children do that as they feel it's "elitist". Wouldn't be elitist if all children learned it. Then bureaucrats and administrators might recover the ability to write properly.
- How to became a polyglot?
- Learn a lot languages.
you are a genius
Really? :o
Wow Incredible. is it serious ?
I would've never expected that
Wow thank you for this useless tip. Thank you.
I'm a 23 y/o male, native spanish speaker, english is my second, Portuguese my third and i'm going for russian now.
Couldn't have done it without having an actual native or proficient user of the languages by my side to copy.
To me a fundamental strategy to learn a language is exposure. Exposures to culture, non verbal expressions, voice tones, pronunciation and ways of expression. Every language has something unique of its own referring to how you view the world from the meaning of the words.
I just do this for fun
Yes!
I believe in exposure too, but I love to call it ‘immersion' because it's the most natural way I can think of.
Immersion leads to acquiring the language, not learning(and I don't care what behaviorists have to say about this😂, my experiences taught me so )
The difference: By acquiring you'll adopt tones, nonverbal cues, and language fillers unconsciously, while most learners might not get those without trying!
On my 4th language now and I can differentiate between the languages I learned and those I acquired.
Idéntico en tus primeros 3, portugués quizá a la mitad por lo que decís, poca exposición a la cultura
Dear Sir, When I began using our public library as a young teenager in the early 1960's, I discovered Loom of Language which opened the world of foreign languages to me. In later years, when I became more proficient in the study of foreign languages several things happened. I found my knowledge of Arabic aided me in learning how to read Persian. Hebrew and German aided me in learning Yiddish. Arabic and Persian along with Hindi and Sanskrit has aided me in learning Urdu. I have not had much of a desire in learning to speak foreign languages, but mostly in learning to read them. Also in the late 1980's and 1990's, I taught to learning to read Chinese through learning the Chinese ideograms. Sometimes I enjoy reading Japanese, but really I must learn the katakana and hiragana along with Japanese grammar!
Not a coincidence you're a Webester
Please proofread before posting you said you "taught to learning to read Chinese." Please clarify.
@@christywells2707 Please increase your reading comprehension, he meant "I taught myself to learn to read Chinese"
Even though this statement still sounds awkward, you can't rely on everyone to proofread everything that they've written on the internet. It is unreasonable to expect that.
The onus is on you to make sense of it.
@@WHALEBOY777 you killed him, good job
This man came straight from the conquest of Gaul to teach me about languages
_the character designer did a splendid job at designing him_
You are very smart and you look like a Roman magistrate!
Indeed he does
no he doesn't
@@user-zj2iu4lu1z yeah, you are right. He looks more like a Roman Emperor actually. He's what I imagine Julius Caesar would have looked like.
rabini się wypowiedzieli
@@Gadavillers-Panoir "he looks more like Roman emperor"
No he actually in fact most truly doesn't indeed look like Roman emperor, let alone with your ridiculous "more".
He looks Anatolian, Indid and Armenian.
I wanted to say thank you to you for your video. Just over a month ago, I watched this video and once I understood that by speaking English, I already knew a lot of French words, I decided to give French another go. ( I barely got a C at GCSE so assumed I was bad at languages. ) This time I did more research and discovered I am a visual learner, so changed how I learn and that made all the difference. I have made good progress in French in only a month. Halfway through, I tried Italian just for fun and my brain began picking up the patterns in the language even though I had never studied Italian before. I was amazed. Learning French was helping me to learn Italian. I now have a new love for languages and will not stop until I'm fluent. I wanted to say a big thank you to you as it was your video that sparked this all off and made me realise I can actually be good at languages.
This is so sweet! How's it going? If it's halted, this is me encouraging you to start again! 💗
There are no bad students but there are an awful lot of bad teachers.
What helped you to make such progress, please share.
I've been working on Spanish. I'll try Latin too. Withdrew from it in college, and Americans (i.e. Thomas Jefferson) used to speak several languages. Miamians frequently do whether they're generational Americans or Cuban Americans. I understand Melania Trump speaks several languages.
Its been 2 years. You fluent yet?
I had heard other polyglots recommend focusing on a single language at a time, but this video convinced me to try with two since I am learning Portuguese (for fun) and French (for work). What I find the most bothersome is learning all the mannerisms native speakers use in conversation because you need them to sound "natural", but they are only really learned (and quickly forgotten) after a lot of real-world practice. Sometimes, I even wonder whether it's possible to have a high speaking ability in several languages for a person in "normal" circumstances (i.e., no foreign language speaking parent, no international school, no immigré granpa, etc.)
"... if you're smart, you can handle that." Honestly it's refreshing to speak to the best in one's potential. So often material tries to find the lowest common denominator to hoist any person into a subject, but honestly it's always best to give people more credit and provide a more robust and honest approach in offering people learning material. Almost no kid is told they can learn multiple languages at a time, yet nobody bats an eye at kids growing up naturally in multi-lingual families. Who said one's individual education can't be multi-lingual?
UberOcelot Conversely, I have also met people afraid to speak multiple languages in front of infants and toddlers. Babies sort things out very easily and if there is any language delay, it will be weeks or a few months and hey will jump to the level of their peers and also surpass them. I have known many bilingual children and a few multilingual ones. Don’t let anyone make you afraid to give this gift to your child. Also, any child who is slow to verbalize can be taught sign language - this is a legitimate language and also has many benefits for brain development.
You're extremely right, our education is so often unified to the low-medium level, all the stuff you read online and all the stuff you are told by the teachers and all these experts from online schools and stuff are suitable for the average person, having problems with language learning, but there are definitely part of these average people with language learning problems, who are perfectly able to learn languages easily. I myself learned English with no connection with native speakers and other stuff, I had good understanding of grammar, thank to my school teacher, basic vocabulary and nothing more by the end of the school, now I can perfectly communicate with anybody in English and there's no any language barrier
Well, I think I'm reasonably smart, got a couple of degrees, but I was never able to learn a foreign language. Failed at French, got thrown out of the Latin class because I was so hopeless. Since then I had another go at Latin -- that didn't last long -- tried a course using audio tapes for Spanish, managed quite well at first, learned nearly a thousand words, but then I hit a Spanish tense that has no correspondence with English, gave up for a couple of weeks, decided to try again then found I'd forgotten all of those words apart from two! It would have to be an uncannily brilliant book to help me learn another language, never mind two at the same time!
@@carlgrove8793 learn Scots as a foreign language :)
@@user-vn2on9tz9g When I was doing canvassing calls for a charity I found I could do quite good Scots and not bad Northern. However, I spoke to one guy in Glasgow, and he had no idea what I was saying.
6:58 : In the quote of Churchill, there is only one word from French which is "surrender" . That was really funny 😂😂😂
@Marta Aldama Cervantes ah, women...
It makes me mad that Churchill said that. Europe was broken after WWI. They didn’t have the means to fight the Germans. England would have fallen if we had not helped them. The Treaty of Versailles destroyed
Europe economically. It is costly to fight a war.
And I guessed right.
shadrach I can understand how you think this but I could also say if it wasn’t for the British we would all be speaking German.Churchill’s quote here is how the British responded. They are amazing people. Despite the constant bombing they kept positive and that positivity allowed them to never give up. “Keep calm and carry on” We can’t imagine what it would have been like to be under such devastating destruction. And this spirit is still in the British today.
France, the only country to surrender 3 times in 1 war.
Loom of Language was reprinted as a paperback by the Merlin Press in 1996; I bought remainder copies for £2.00 each. As a language teacher I bought 12 copies and favoured friends have been given copies until I have only 2 copies left. A remarkable book.
All of this sounds so logical and familiar. I am a native German speaker and I am fluent in English. For a long time I had the "wired" idea to learn French. (I live just an hour car drive away from France.) Then by accident I clicked on a a french TH-cam video. It had subtitles. In French of course. Using my English I could almost read some sentences. I was quite surprised. I signed up to a French course on Duolingo a few days later. I am 230 days into it and I am now able to somewhat read French Wikipedia articles. Given my experience with first learning English at school then acquiring English by reading lots of it, I, without doubt, will be able to communicate in French some day. Surprise: I even can read some Spanish utilizing my miniscule French. Now I am tempted to start Spanish or Latin once I am done with Duolingo.
I speak French and English and I always compare the two as a lot of words are almost the same. English even borrows a lot of French words. Funny anecdote, French is actually my first language, but free 5 years in England I had almost forgotten how to speak French and I had a bit of a British accent when I got back. I would also make the same typical mistakes like saying "la garçon and le fille" now I rarely make this mistake but it still happens. I also use English words in French that to me sound like they could be used in French too and people make fun of me cause to them I make no sense 😂
Dude 230 days and you can somewhat read Wikipedia articles, you are wasting your time, use Anki and learn the most frequent words and buy a book on basic grammar and try to tie french with your daily life. For example traveling, or watching movies or series in french with French subs or no subs at all
Go for it!
Hi native speaker of English here, wired is a completely different from the word weird which is what I thought you meant. Just so you know hope this helps!!
I love this vídeo. I'm bilingual: Català and Spanish. I used to study French at school. Once, when I went to Switzerland, in a restaurant I heard a couple talking very similar to Catalan and they were talking Romance, one of the officials languages of the country. We talked together and we could understand us really well. It was great. I can understand a little Italian and Portuguese without to study it. Now, I'm trying to study English, I'm 61, my goal is not to have a grade for a job, perhaps only I would like to read some books, or to watch some films in the original language. By the way, verbs are my nightmare! Thanks a lot.
Very interesting story thanks
Your English is great!
@LetThemTalkTV Could you please summarize the video? I still don’t understand what I must do now to learn my next two languages
I am a native spanish speaker, I binge-watched a couple of years ago a series in Catalan (never heard the language before), 3 seasons, by the time I got to the last season I barely needed subtitles. It took me two weeks to get to understand like 95% of everything said. I'm still shocked at how so similar both languages are. And it for sure changed the way I think about learning similar languages
A few years ago I had a holiday in Barcelona. The friend I went with had studied Spanish (or should I say Castilian) at school. In a restaurant she ordered something in Spanish. The waiter looked at her blankly. Then I ordered the same dish in Catala. He understood at once. My friend said to me "you bastard! You never told me you could speak Catala". As an elaborate practical joke I had been studying a Catala phrasebook during my lunch breaks at work for a month before the start of our holiday.
I found a copy of the Loom of Language in a used book sale around 1995. What a great discovery that was! In fact, I used the ‘museum’ appendices as a starting point for learning Spanish, French, Italian, and German. The lists also gave me organized topics that I could use for learning any language I’d like, though with the aid of a dictionary and good grammar/usage resources for choosing among synonyms.
Love the loom of language. Dad had it on the shelf when i was still in single digits. Read it many many times. Helped me sooo much.
I have been waiting for this video, you answered so many questions I had. Great job as always!
I am just speechless! This episode is so interesting, so inspiring... full of everything I love about learning languages! I am so happy to subscribe your channel. Take care of yourself :)
I'm so happy you subscribed.
Speechless! 😁😁😁
Being speechless isn't going to help you speak languages better!
Yes, I was looking for this book for some years and then unexpectedly I came across a book published in Portuguese and to my great surprise I discovered that it was a translation of The Loom of Language. Even it's hard red cover is similar.
Fascinating book! Great that you are putting it in the spotlight!
The easiest way to learn many languages: etymology: the history and evolution of words. Learn lots of alphabets, learn lots of languages that go with it. And like he said, small condensed lists of pronouns and articles.
Excellent info, you've helped to reignite my excitement for language learning. Thanks.
LOVE LOVE LOVE this video, i know the basics of Italian and my mother tongue is Spanish so when you were explaining the variation of the words from Latin I was speechless bc it really makes it MUCH more easier
This by far the most interesting video on language I have ever watched on TH-cam! Amazing work!
What an absolute pleasure to listen to you and hear your explanations.
You speak as a calm and confident educator, inspiring students and confidence to proceed into new areas.
I really enjoyed this and will look at your other contributions.
PS: subscribed
I’m learning french and portuguese and they help me out so much. If something doesn’t make sense in one the answer is usually in the other. I already speak Spanish too so it helps.
I say if someone can go to college and take 5-6 classes you can learn more than one language at once.
Não desista do português, bro! No TH-cam há o canal "Curso em Vídeo" com inúmeras aulas de programação.
Si te chamuyo yo no cazas una no cazas ma que español habla boncha ?
Has comprendido ? 😃
This is the most engaging and interesting video i've ever seen on explaining language learning, of any sort.
Great work.
Completely agree. This blew my mind.
This may possibly be the best book recommendation I’ve ever had. Thank you so much man!
I read The Loom of Language more than 10 years ago the first time snd it helped me to understand Bulgarian) One of the greatest learning books on languages, indeed.
5:10 Technically the native English word for “deer” is “hart”. “Deer” descends from the word that originally meant “animal” (before it was replaced by its French/Latin equivalent).
Intresting, the dutch word for "deer/hart" is "hert" and the dutch word for animal is indeed "dier" pronounced as "deer".
"Tier" is animal in German
You need to give life to every single word you learn and you will remember em forever.
This video (and your others) are a joy to watch. Thank you!
What a fabulously engaging man. Soooo interesting. I actually stopped, so I could take it all in. Thanks for the book recommendation.
Wow, thank you so much...I'm gonna start learning all the French, Italian, and Spanish particles.
Just join your channel, Professor. I am loving it.
Being native Portuguese and not a linguistics expert at all (my expertise is marketing and communication), my experience is Portuguese idiom give me all the advantages you just mentioned.
Actually, I learned English on my own at a young age (which I hope escuses my "french"). I learned by exposure. Same with Spanish and Italian.
Now that I am an old lady :))))))) I am learning Slavic languages... Turns out there are lots of Slavic words with Latin and Greek roots and most neologisms are commun to Portuguese, or English or French!
Amazing!
Cheers from Lisbon.
Thanks you so much for your amazing videos.
Great, informative video. Thanks for posting! I was able to find the book at my local library. Whoo-hoo!
My native language is Chinese and my second language is English, learned it through conversing and understanding contexts. I came to America barely spoke a word of English and in three years I got C1 from IELTS without memorizing a single word or preparing for the test. I just started to learn Japanese and so far it's making a lot of sense 😂
This may work with English, but it certainly won't work with harder languages like German. I tried similar approaches but failed miserably. Currently, I am learning new approaches coming from varies language experts, one aspect of it was inspired by Michel Thomas.
@@rollingdownfalling i disagree. english isn’t inherently easier or harder than german. that’s not how languages work…
@@harmandon Have you tested out with different languages.
My experience in German (like most other fellow students who's learning German) is definitely the sentence structure (der Satzbau) and as a result it also affects listening comprehension. It's just very difficult to overcome the B1 barrier without some intensity, unlike English, even though I make plenty of mistakes at intermediate level, but never have I constantly having trouble forming or finishing a sentence. Not only you have to get used to constantly splitting a sentence into fragments and drastically change the verb position, some sentences required very alien forms of reflexive and preposition combo which requires memorisation. An example that is very simple can be:
There is nothing to worry about.
Es gibt nichts, worüber man sich Sorgen machen müsste.
(Literally)
It gives nothing, what over one themselves Worry making should/would have to.
Only if I can overcome that without too much thinking can I get fluent like a normal B2.
@@rollingdownfalling
yes i am a polyglot (i think),
keep in mind i said the word "inherently". english comes easy to most people because they are constantly surrounded and bombarded by it by virtue of it being the language of the internet and global affairs.
i felt this when i learnt dutch. dutch word order drove me a little crazy because i was not used to it nor had i ever encountered something similar. this doesn't mean dutch is necessarily "harder" to learn. i'm not sure if that makes sense. but in terms of the native language, a child learning dutch will have no more trouble than a child learning english, despite dutch having many more exceptions to its word order.
@@maalikserebryakov you entirely missed the point.
I completely agree with learning particles first. When I first started learning Spanish, I learned 'este', 'es', 'con', 'sin', 'ese' etc. and within a week, I could read a fair amount of Spanish.
Yes but what exactly ARE particles and where can I find a list of them (I'm trying to learn French )
@@weave4247 they're your words for articles, connectives that sort of stuff. In English for example, some particles would be: the; a; an; this; that; here; there; they; those; these etc. In French, to learn particles, learn thise equivalents and more. K believe French has three words for definite articles and two for indefinite articles, meaning 3 words for 'the' (le, la, les) and two words for 'a/an' (un, une).
Hi sir, I m a friend speaker
But I m learning English since 2 years but it isn't able to speak what is my problem.
So true, I'm a Portuguese native speaker trying to learn German and can understand and/or guess verbs and subjects pretty easily (based on English), but get seriously stuck in the "particles".
@@gaelledveleumen5346 you need to surround yourself in an English environment. Go live in an English speaking country for a few months to a year
Fascinating. This is the most interesting language channel on TH-cam. One aspect of this video that I'd like to highlight is the recommendation to concentrate on "particles" (articles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) early on in your language study. These are all the little words you can never seem to remember, and in my experience are the real rate limiters when you're reading. There are some of these words in French that I've looked up a thousand times and can never seem to remember. If anyone has written a book entitled, "The 200 Most Annoying Little French Words I Can Never Seem To Remember", please tell me. A set of flash cards and a drill tape would be helpful, too. Thanks.
I already have learnt Italian. Currently learning Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. I do something similiar with tables and include Latin and formal English to try to find the connection & evolution. On paper it's straightforward but in everyday life it is so much harder not to mix up the romance languages when speaking, particularly when Italian is dominant in my brain, as the more fluent language. Also surprising how much genders vary between the romance languages.
Try to learn actual Portuguese instead of Brazilian Portuguese, it is much better in sentence construction, vocabulary and verbs and so on. Brazilians actually recommend learning Original Portuguese because it is how it is meant to be spoken :)
Have a nice day ;)
Italiano? Anch'io, perchè hai imparato l'italiano?
@@ricardoandrade3014 " original " but brazilian portuguese is more traditional the European Portugueses changed more than Brazilian Portuguese bc the Spanish influence.
Te desejo boa sorte. Saudações do 🇧🇷
PS: Wouldn't say that European Portuguese is easier. It may actually be harder for you to learn due to the accents.
I'm Brazilian and I never heard any other Brazilian giving the advice of learn the "original" portuguese. If you want to learn Brazilian Portuguese then you should learn it instead of other Portuguese, of course. There is many speakers out there and so much content, you aren't going to worry about finding material in our language at all.
Sir, I have no words (in any language) to express how wonderful was to watch this video. Thank you ginormously!!!
This book started me on the language journey more than 60 years ago!. It was republished by Merlin Press London in 1981.
Fun fact, Malcolm X recommends this book in his autobiography (if I remember correctly)
Your approach is brilliant, sir! Lots of thanks.
Thank for that video Gabor Mate.
Looking great BTW!!
This video came up at the right moment. I'm going to university where I will learn six languages at the same time!
Cheer me with 👍🏾
Wow! I hop they are related languages
@@LetThemTalkTV
Not really 😅
Arabic, French (or Portuguese), Norwegian, Latin, ancient Greek, old Slavonic, and English(I know it pretty well) ( Oh, seven😸) and Russian as my native language
To tell the truth, I doubt I can handle it😬
@@Moonlight-px6sz Where this university is?
this gives me hopes to learn my 3rd one ... super hard
@@Aalpine001 St.-Petersburg
I totally agree! I discovered this book in my high school library back in the 1980's and now have my own copy. I have read it many times, and I have learned more about languages and linguistics from this book than from any other.
Great video, I am from Germany and I had big problems with learning English in school because I was forced to. I needed to repeat a class because of my bad English and Latin. Today I speak really good English because I need it for my job. During staying in Souther America for half a year I also started to learn Spanish. Thanks for the great video, I am motivated to improve the languages I already speak and to learn new ones
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing from the book!!.
This is superb. The guy speaks really well, is succinct in his explanations, the topic is fascinating in its own right and the whole is inspirational for those of us who struggle. I shall return to my studies with renewed vigour. Whoever you are, Sir, thank you. That was brilliant.
I grew up not learning French until high school and by then everyone was so far ahead of me, the teacher just left me alone (and of course I failed) so I developed an intense dislike for the language. As an adult, my job took me weekly to Quebec so I made myself learn a few stock phrases and my co-workers down there did their best to help. I have tried and tried to learn French, even taking night courses but have never been satisfied with my slow progress. I recently gave it up and started to learn Dutch and Norwegian. Last week I totally surprised myself while shopping for a product, whose description was totally in French, by actually understanding almost the entire thing without having to resort to Google Translate. I am now back to my French lessons, this time with fervor. I guess more sank into my stubborn brain than I thought. I also think learning a completely different language opened up my brain's susceptibility to the much-feared French. Love your video!
Keep going!
Duolingo app has helped me immensely with French. First year of high school, an honour in French. 2nd year-failed, due to a different teacher. So never bothered till I found 3 years ago and 50 odd years later, my heritage is french. And found a French relative. But the real winner is Alexa. She is the most amazing online Google teacher. I have learnt more from her Google podcasts, than having private French lessons.
This video was so fascinating. Thanks!
I’m a beginner and tips like “learn the particles” are gold. I wish it was easier to find a list of them though 😂
Just a tip if you're travelling and speaking French. Instead of "hôtel" for a hostel, if they don't quite understand, "auberge" can also mean hostel. Youth hostel is an "auberge de jeunesse". This at least goes for French Canada, lol learned that trying to direct a cabby to a youth hostel in Montreal, trying to say "C'est comme un hôtel, mais c'est moin cher, avec beaucoup de personnes dans une chambre." haha.
I love the way you talk about the English language! It's amazing. Already subbed thank you very much
75 years old now and still trying to learn a new language each year. And then I started Irish. Abandon hope.
The lessons in this video I’ve lived with for decades and never heard of the book. Now I’ll look for it. Thanks.
I wondered about buffing up my Spanish along with learning French. There is a youtube teaching French with Spanish subtitles. This made sense because it attaches neural pathways in Spanish to new ones in French. I didn't explain that very well. While it seems really difficult, it actually links a lot together in your head. It's nice he validated this concept of learning two languages at once. Forget Portuguese though. With irregular verbs and non-intuitive pronunciation...does not compute...but maybe after a summer in Lisboa...
I bought a reprint of this book in 2000 after my German teacher recommended it. Very good book to have if you can get hold of a copy.
Fascinating. What an excellent video.
This man has a good command of what he does. He provides us with good learning content.
Great tip about the history of os → ô and s → é in French! It's really helped me with memorizing French vocabulary over the past few months!
So many great points! I study italian, Spanish French and Portuguese. I’m super aware of the false friends and familiarity with style helps a lot for my brain to differentiate
Boa sorte e bom proveito a aprender todas as quatro línguas!
Alex Eru obrigado, eu gosto muito!
Wow, thank you so much for thus recommendation! I’ll definitely try to find this book and read it! Now I see that my desire to learn Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at the same time, having studied Latin, makes perfect sense after all…🤩🙌 and when I approach to the other Germanic languages, I’ll definitely try to learn it in set using this approach 👍
Thank you for this brilliant video!
The same applies to the Slavic group of languages. They have a lot of similarities between each other so you could learn more of them at the same time
But you should beware of "false friends," there are heaps of them between Slavic languages.
I'm 23 and recently discovered that I have a bit of a knack for picking up different alphabets and scripts, I really enjoy languages that have entirely different scripts and currently I can read and write in English, German (though I'm a bit rusty, but like this video illustrates, Germanic languages are easier to grasp for primary English speakers), Hindi/Sanskrit and Japanese (still working on the Kanji). I think there's a framework to learning languages that I find quite intuitive and exciting... Looking to pick up Russian or Arabic next, but there is so much choice for us out there!
WOW....that is fantastic, good for you !
Man, dude, you have such an interesting look! I love it!
Thanks for such detailed explanation.
7:27 this is something that I’ve always thought about since I started understanding English. I noticed that the “fancy” words that people used to polish their speech were very similar to everyday words in Spanish.
Good point: friendly = amicable (Spanish "amigable"), often = frequently (frecuentemente), in love = enamored (enamorado), loving = amorous (amoroso), weapons = arms (armas), fair = just (justo), feeling = sentiment (sentimiento), punish = castigate (castigar), rich = prosperous (próspero), bad = malicious (malicioso), good = benevolent (benévolo), angry = furious (furioso), shy = timid (tímido), etc. There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of examples like this.
That's because they (usually) come from French. French-derived words and the older Anglo-Saxon words, coexisting in the same place and time, got striated by social class, hence you could say "urine" to be polite or "piss" to be earthy.
Read a story about a child, recently immigrated to USA from a Latin American country, doing very well in an english test, mostly vocabulary, despite barely knowing the language, while his classmates, didn't do so well.
That was because, the test was mostly about words of Romance origin, which he knew better because of his background.
This is a kind of content that I admire every time I stumble upon one. I've been compensating my inability to attend to my English classes this past week by just surfing the internet looking for something to learn about it and your video gave me a bit of inspiration. Thank you, sir, I'm definitely your subscriber from now on
I've found that learning two unrelated languages simultaneously is also efficient as it helps me understand the grammar/structure of the languages more easily through comparison.
That was fun! In Canada all packaging contains English and French. I can read and write French words better than saying them. I learn nouns, verbs and joining words just like a toddler. I also like to make a game of it ie. Office in French is bureau. In English a bureau is a chest of drawers. In an office there is a filing cabinet. A filing cabinet looks something like a set of drawers. Another method I like to use is singing foreign language songs on TH-cam. The Israel National Anthem has the lyrics in Hebrew writing, Romanized lettering for pronunciation of Hebrew lyrics and English translation as well.
Another language English has borrowed significantly from is Arabic. Coffee, sugar, lemon and lime, saffron, etc, and of course the ones that still contain the Arabic definite article such as algebra, alchemy et al.
I agree about studying similar languages simultaneously. When I was a kid I studied German in school while taking Dutch by radio lessons on shortwave radio. Far from being confusing, it shows the student *how each language works* in its own way as you can see the same word rendered in its own "cloak". And that makes everything after it simpler because you have a pattern.
I've heard of Arabic in English, specifically algebra. I've heard that once you learn a foreign language, specifically in the same family, subsequent languages become easier with each addition
I'm a native Portuguese speaker and I really felt it easier to learn German based on english
Eu também achei muito bacana, um dia vou começar o alemão também, pena que os idiomas asiáticos são completamente a parte desses padrões.
O mesmo para mim. Ainda quero aprender o Holandês também, que tem semelhanças com ambos o inglês e o alemão
Right but there's a problem when it comes to asian languages, they are so different that not even knowing English really facilitates the process. I'm learning japanese and I wish that applied here too :(
@@JoseSantos-el8nj maybe this will get better after the first Asian language you learn. Imagine if you knew Chinese, the Japanese kanji would get easier and also the Korean lang
@@alissanrocklove acho que depois de chegar no b2 do alemão, devo voltar pras línguas latinas e recuperar meu frances
Thank you. What an eye opener.
Super interesting! Thank you for making this video, as a French speaking German, I now live in the Uk and have found English very easy to learn….it all makes sense now.
First!💃 Love your channel, Gideon. Thank you ever so much for your reading tips and book picks. You're amazing 😍😍😍💖💖💖💜💜💜💖💖💖💜💜💜
You are amazing. I'm happy you enjoy them.
Greetings. Thank you for the piece of advice. I bought the book.
I hope you enjoy it. Let us know.
You are correct it is the best book on the study of languages have read it for many years
This video is GOLD!
I found your video helpful and answers a good fe questions I have with remedies! Thanks!
"Of course, English is not going to help you if you're learning an Asian language."
Laughing from my island as loanwords run out of control.
LoL
tagalog?
Also, Singlish is a thing in Singapore and tons of Japanese words are straight up English transliterations.
[Joining the lauhging choir in Spanglish]
@@KasumiRINA Singlish is not a foreign language. It is a dialect of English, even if widely regarded as not a good form of it.
I was given The Loom of Language in Germany when studying German. I bought new copy a few years ago. It is the best. I'm using it to learn Norwegian now.
What a great channel. Super interesting!! After your explanation, I just realized how fortunate I am to be fluent in Spanish as well. Keep it coming 👍
This video landed on my TH-cam doorstep.
Interesting and well described.
I'd forgotten the meaning of "polygon" as well, so a "win- win", which sounds like an American original.
🙏🎯
I noticed this similarity too after trying to learn Spanish. At the same time, I use the same method with east asian languages namely Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Korean. I grew up speaking hokkien which is one of the ancient chinese dialects and I found a lot of similar words with korean and japanese which helped me learn it faster. However the problem I had with studying similar languages at the same time is that I tend mix up the words while talking 😅
I read the Loom of Language when I was at secondary school in the 60s. It fired my interest in the history of languages. As well as English, French and German (all Indo European languages) I speak Indonesian and Lao as I live in SE Asia. It is interesting to compare different families of languages!
I am glad that TH-cam recommended this video!
I’m going to track down this book. I think you have provided some very important insights here!
Delightful video! I am a native spanish speaker that learned English at a very young age.
So I guess I have a bit of a double edge.
I LOVE learning languages. When I visited Europe some years ago, my girlfriend was amazed at how fast I picked up new languages and was able to read signs or understand simple phrases without having studied german or italian. After a week in Prague I was even speaking some basic Czech.
She would ask "How are you doing that?". And for me it just...made sense.
I guess that having wired my brain as bilingual at the age of 4 gave me an intuitive approach to language.