4 Things I Wish I Knew About Learning Languages
Learning a new language can seem tricky for many people. I know I could have saved myself so much time had I known the simple things I share in this video.
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About me:
I tried for about 10 years on and off to learn Chinese. Like most people who try to learn a language I got nowhere. I watched all the KZhead videos of polyglots and it felt like they had something I didn't. Eventually the penny dropped and I realised anyone really can learn a new language if they have the right approach. My goal is to help others achieve their aim of learning a foreign language
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1. Learn every day. 2. Become an olfactory learner. 3. Write to your grandma in the language you're learning. 4. Don't have kids; they really take time away from learning languages.
Siyo, Matt and wado for these tips. I'm beginning to learn Cherokee, so similar to kanji, part of the process is learning the symbols - Syllabary, and tuning my ear to sound and cadences. Our teacher's book is journeying into Cherokee, and becoming Lifelong Learners. I use a handy online dictionary to add vocabulary, and jot them down. Ed reminds us to say the syllables as we write them. A recent resource has a little story about each of the 80+ syllables, inspired by a book on learning Japanese kanji - helps with some I was having trouble remembering! Wado!
Well, I learned to ride a bicycle at 46. And ride it (almost) every day since. ;)
As soon as you said "Fill yer boots" I IMMEDIATELY has a flashback of the prank call where the girl wanted to hire the demolition company to demolish her school and she told the boss to "fill yer boots"
Main points 1. Be consistent. Make a habit out of learning 2. Find something you like. If you try to force yourself, you won’t get far..so find something to do in your language that is fun for you 3. Figure out where in your schedule language learning fits daily. 4. Don’t burn out. Start small and build up your habits over time. Unless you’re like me and get obsessed over the language you’re learning from day 1…in which case go crazy and spend every waking hour learning ;) These are 100% on point. I would also add the following: 5. Don’t feel like you must understand 100% of what you consume in the language. For input to be comprehensible, you just need to understand most of it. If you miss a word or two, that’s ok. 6. In contrast, if you feel like there is a very important piece of information keeping you from understanding the sentence..for example, a grammar point that you are not able to understand from context, stop whatever you’re consuming to do a bit of research on to what that grammar point is about. Trust me, it will be of great help later as you keep finding it. 7. Language learning does not look the same for everyone as mentioned in this video. With this in mind, take everything you see online about language learning, including this comment, with a grain of salt. Just because someone tells you “this is the best way to learn a language” does not make it the case for you….Experiment with different approaches until you find something you can stick to. 8. If you’re anything like me, your process when learning a language evolves the more you know of that language. When you reach intermediate level, what used to work for you as a beginner suddenly stops working or just becomes boring or a chore…..whenever you get this feeling, it does not mean you should drop the language, but perhaps it just means you need to re-evaluate your approach ;)
I've often wondered why this sort of advice isn't the first thing taught in every language class. From school, and over the years with occasional evening classes I've dabbled in languages, but nobody ever gave me simple, straightforward advice like this. I guess if on day one of Japanese they said 'its going to take you 1,000 hours to be able to ask someone the way to a shop, and 4,000 hours to be able to chat to a girl in a bar', nobody would do it. But it took years (and various YTers), to really get a grasp of what it takes to learn a language.
Thanks Phil! I thought exactly the same thing. Also, the fact that it is do-able for people if they stick with it over the long term
Hey there, Linguistic Comrade! Thanks sooooo much for all your work. It's groundbreaking and eye-opening. Kudos from Belarus 😍🤩☺
HUGE KUDOS 😉
Children get at least 10 to 20 million words of input by the age of 5 to learn a language naturally. Some get 30 million words of input by that age. So by the time you have got 8 million words of input, you should start to see good signs of progress. Loads of input is totally necessary. Everybody agrees on that.
New Matt video! Let’s goooooo!!! The cinematography is on point, Matt. Better all the time-well done. I give this video another 30 seconds before someone posts it on the Dreaming Spanish subreddit. Writing out what you normally do at a certain time per day is super solid and a LOT of beginners always seem to be wondering how some people get multiple hours of input in a day-and you just showed them.
Thanks Jeff! Yeah, simple things like that can make all the difference. Glad you like the shots (always takes me longer than I think to get them!)
Thanks
Obrigado
👏👏👏👏🌺🌺
BTW, how’s your Chinese? Can you shock a native yet? (Just kidding!)😂😂😂
I shock myself sometimes! Hahaha. I am actually thinking of getting back to it - I was starting on working through HSK5 stuff but it's been years since I've done anything with it so will have to ditch the ego and start with really easy stuff to build myself back up